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John Battsek

Kidult: My Kid Could Paint That

Documentaries

Factual: Arts, Culture & the Media

30/07/2008

BBC Four - Kidult: My Kid Could Paint That

Documentary that gets to the heart of 4-year-old artworld cause celebre Marla Olmstead.

A documentary that explores an artworld cause celebre. Marla Olmstead, who is four, sold over 300,000 dollars-worth of paintings before a shocking claim destroyed her reputation.

Documentary that gets to the heart of an extraordinary artworld cause célèbre.

In the span of only a few months, 4-year-old Marla Olmstead rocketed from total obscurity into international renown - and sold over $300,000 dollars worth of paintings. She was compared to Kandinsky and Pollock, and called 'a budding Picasso'. Inside Edition, The Jane Pauley Show, and NPR did pieces on her, and The Today Show and Good Morning America got in a bidding war over an appearance by the bashful toddler. There was talk of corporate sponsorship with the family fielding calls from The Gap and Crayola.

Then, five months into Marla's new life as a celebrity, and just short of her fifth birthday, a bombshell dropped. CBS's 60 Minutes aired an exposé suggesting strongly that the paintings were painted by her father, himself an amateur painter. As quickly as the public built Marla up, they tore her down. The New York Post asked whether 'the juvenile Jackson Pollock may actually be a full-fledged Willem de Frauding'. The Olmsteads were barraged with hate mail and ostracized, whilst sales of the paintings dried up and Marla's art dealer considered moving.  Embattled, the Olmsteads themselves turned to a documentary filmmaker to clear their name.

Torn between his own responsibility as a journalist and the family's desire to see their integrity restored, the director finds himself drawn deeper and deeper into a situation that can't possibly end well for him and them, and could easily end badly for both.

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