My Kid Could Paint That
F for Fake: Redux.
My Kid Could Paint That wraps up the always-intriguing mystery of art forgery with the plebian but never-ending debate over the legitimacy of contemporary abstract art. If either of those questions intrigue you, this documentary will work, but I think there are YouTube video essays I’ve seen that are more insightful takes on both questions. I also know that, given the fact that I live with a museum worker, both questions are kind of...played out, at least to my ears. They’re interesting in a way that is very entry-level, but anyone with any previous interest in art, the art market, and art forgery will find <PERSON>’s story to be ironically paint-by-numbers.
A large portion of the blame for why this feels uninteresting goes to the director, who, in my view, injects so much of himself into the narrative that the bias conquers the film, and validates the leading questions. 862
I think what the film starts out as - a portrait of a protege as a young woman - is much more intriguing. Does it matter if they’re 100% her ideas? To my mind, no, because the point of the film isn’t about the greatness of a protege, but rather the development, and even the greatest of artists are “taught” to a degree. What My Kid Could Paint That is showing is the teaching process, but by conflating “teaching” with “forgery,” I think the documentary tries to appeal to the lowest common denominator while ignoring the nature of artistic development.
What I want is a followup with <PERSON>, who seems to still paint, but largely as a sort of half-hobbyist half-professional, and I think without a true arc post-documentary, what we have is a very biased,very basic portrait of the artist at a young age that insists that there is no artist, which clearly isn’t true, 15 years forward. All views I disagree with, and, like the questions asked, that I find troublingly simplistic.
Does that mean this is a bad documentary? Not at all, especially because forgery, to me, is interesting, even if I think it’s a bad reading here. What I think is that My Kid is a very base documentary, and believe that, while it works as a starting point if you’ve never confronted these questions before, I personally think there are more interesting ways to ask these questions, and more interesting answers to be found. 80