Jil McIntosh: Rude, Lewd & Tattooed

At last, a teen movie I can appreciate ...

This is absolutely brilliant.

So what's art, what's value, and is it wrong to know what I like?

I watched a fascinating documentary last night, My Kid Could Paint That. First aired at the Sundance Film Festival, it follows the story of Marla Olmstead, a four-year-old who apparently went up to her hobby-artist father one day when he was painting, expressed interest, and subsequently turned out abstract paintings that a coffee shop owner put up in his store in Binghamton, New York, where Marla lives. It caught the attention of a local writer, who did a story on it. And in the blink of an eye, Marla was front-page news around the world, and people were paying up to $35,000 for a canvas.

Well, that was until 60 Minutes got involved, suggesting that Marla's father had a heavy hand in the paintings, if not the entire process itself. Sales of her work screeched to a halt, those who had paid tens of thousands of dollars threatened to sue, and Anthony Brunelli, the artist who had originally hailed her as a genius and put her work on sale in his gallery, admitted on-camera that he'd never liked abstract art, and he'd done it just to embarrass those who would pay so much for a child's drawing.

But slowly Marla's popularity grew again, Brunelli went back to praising her and charging sky-high prices, and at the end of the movie, you're not really sure if she actually did or didn't create the paintings -- some of which have an enticing, colorful charm, and I generally don't think highly of abstract art. (I'm actually quite taken with Zane Dancing, frankly.)

It's a fascinating film, especially since it feeds into something that's always fascinated me: the idea of value. I hear it a lot because of my interest in antique cars, and people who think my vehicles are more valuable than they are. When people ask me what my vehicles are worth, I say, "What the next person will give me for them -- nothing more, nothing less."

And that's the heart of My Kid. The filmmaker interviews people who rave about the quality of the work, the painter's eye, the use of color, the brilliance of the vision. And when they think that the painting isn't Marla's work, but perhaps her father's, they're prepared to sue to get back what they paid. How does the value shift so dramatically when the quality, the eye, the color and the brilliance of the canvas haven't changed, just the name signed at the bottom? Why is it worth $25,000 when they think Marla painted it, but $25 if Mark Olmstead had done it instead?

In a very telling scene -- edited out of the finished film, but found in the DVD extras -- a panel of art experts discusses the film with a group of people. Two paintings hang behind them. Marla was filmed painting one of them, and it seems far less sophisticated than the other one, which she did off-camera. That second painting has a theme of swirls throughout.

One man points out that, to him, the first painting looks like the way a child might paint, while he describes the second as "someone standing back" and looking at the canvas as a whole. Instantly, one of the art experts shoots back, "Sir, are you an artist? Are you a painter?" He admits he is not, just that it's his opinion. "You're not an artist, you don't know how paint swirls," the expert tells him. "You're not an artist, you don't know how it works."

And there's the gist of it: if you're not one of us, then you're not fit to judge ... just fit to open your wallet and buy the work.

In any case, rent or buy a copy of this movie. It's well worth the sit-down to watch it.