linda fetch

Verna’s friend Hepzibah McNab visited her with a DVD she rented, and they decided to watch it while sitting on the couch cackling, eating popcorn and smoking cheroot cigars. They were so taken with this video that they asked me to watch it with them so we could all talk about it.

This is probably an “old story” for those “au courant” with the “World of Art”, but it was mostly news to all of us. Either that or we’re so old that we heard about it and forgot it…in any case:

The subject of the documentary is a 4 year old girl from Binghamton, New York. While watching her father painting one day she pestered him to do it too. He gave her some paints, brushes and something to paint on. She supposedly created a few pieces this way which were knocking around these folks’ house until a friend half-jokingly suggested he hang them in his coffee shop. After a few offers to purchase came through, a local reporter did a piece on the girl and her paintings. This created a little bit of a local buzz, until finally the NY Times picked up the story and ran two features on her.

The snowball having gained major momentum, the next step was to contact the father’s old school friend who was now a painter himself with a small gallery. Little Marla’s abstract paintings started getting offers in the $1000s.

Inevitably, the skeptics started to surface, and 60 minutes ran a piece pretty much debunking the idea that the girl did these paintings herself.

If you’re like me, you want a simple answer as to whether it was a hoax or not, but the filmmaker doesn’t really let things go that simply.

Rather than write more about it at the moment, I’m just going to leave it at this: go rent the movie and watch it. At the very least it will make you think about the confluence of art, commerce, criticism, and many aspects of human nature.

Thinking about this, ya’d get the feeling that there is something philosophically profound going on here. Well, there is and there isn’t.

In the extras on the DVD, a NY Times art critic explains why “non-representational” art is a truly valid form, why it’s resisted by so many, and other issues. While we found his views interesting and cogent, we all agreed that overall, it misses the point. Which will be the subject of the next (previous?) blog entry (it’s that annoying characteristic that puts later blog entries above earlier ones.)