Two Documentary Films About Art
Henry Geldzahler, Great Curator, and Marla Olmstead, Good Artist
A review of two documentary films that ask What Is Art?, Who Gets To Call It Art?, and Can Children Be Great Artists?
Two recent documentary films highlight the mysteries and perceived fraud involved in creating art, especially art that challenges mainstream ideals of what is art and who creates it.
If artists had a religion, Henry Geldzahler would be one of the great art gods. Who Gets To Call It Art? (2006) is a biographical documentary of Henry Geldzahler, an important Metropolitan Museum of Art Curator who kicked the butts of his curatorial colleagues (and fuddy-duddies) to create the Metropolitan Museum of Contemporary Art.
Geldzahler will perhaps be best remembered for championing the art of Jackson Pollack, Roy Lichtenstein, David Hockney, Franz Kline, Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns, Andy Warhol, Jean Michel Basquiat, Willem de Kooning, Ellsworth Kelly, Claes Oldenburg, Frank Stella, Larry Poons, James Rosenquist and Hans Hofman. Like Alfred Stieglitz, Geldzahler's primary influence is that he recognized the work of these hard working artists and promoted them. The schools of Abstract Expressionism and Pop Art owe their fame and value to this unassuming, bow-tie wearing, homosexual man with exceptionally good taste.
Who Gets to Call It Art? is perhaps for art die-hards only, and includes great vintage footage of some of these great artists at work and talking about Henry Geldzahler, friend and patron saint of artists.
My Kid Could Paint That (2007) is a documentary film about a five-year-old artist and abstract expressionist named Marla Olmstead. While this film questions whether Marla or her well-intentioned parents made the paintings that have sold for thousands of dollars each, it ignores the fact that most young children start their lives as exceptional artists. As we grow older we learn to censor ourselves and what we choose to create-creativity is systematically beaten out of us in the process of growing up. Marla Olmstead is not unique as a great artist, but the fact that her parents promote and sell her work is a bit unique.
My Kid Could Paint That is at its best following Marla and her brother at art openings or at work painting. This film becomes tedious when the filmmaker's own point of view becomes all too visible as he waffles over the truth; did Marla make these paintings, or did her parents? For anyone who has painted with children, the question of this film is a no-brainer. Marla Olmstead is indeed a fun five-year-old painter, but if given the proper materals and attention, most young children are skilled artists.
