Art......What is That?

So over the last few months I've seen some interesting documentaries on art, primarily the legitimacy of art. Recent films like My Kid Could Paint That and Who the #$&% is Jackson Pollock? question the legitimacy of modern art due to the fact that it is defined by art experts or connoisseurs. My Kid... follows the path of child prodigy Marla Olmstead and the controversy of whether or not her parents tampered with her paintings of abstract expressionism. Who the #$&%... delves into the story of a 73 year old truck driver who fights to have a painting she bought for five bucks at a thrift store to be accepted as a true Jackson Pollock painting. These films use a child painter and a truck driver as an intriguing hook to the film, but the center controversy in both films is who or what defines good art to bad. Both don't give you an answer but do provoke thought and conversation. This argument is not new in film, the great Orson Welles made F for Fake in 1974. F is one of the most unconventional films I've seen, but a good one. The film questions art authenticity by showing clips of a documentary done on Elmyr de Hory, a famous art forger. F then focuses on the documentary's writer Clifford Irving, who was found to have fabricated an authorized biography on Howard Hughes. These three movies question the authenticity of art, art expertise, science's use in proof of authenticity in art, and legitimacy of modern art. If you're not sure which film to watch, I'd probably suggest My Kid... as the first and then Who the... next. I'll say right off the back that F for Fake is not for everyone, but check it out if you're adventurous enough.

My Kid Could Paint That trailer:



Who the #$&% is Jackson Pollock? trailer? Can't find one for some reason! Click here to Netflix it, the film can be seen on Watch Instantly:


Since F for Fake is such an unconventional and can be a somewhat confusing movie, here's a retrospective on the film by director Peter Bogdanovich which can be found on the film's Criterion Collection DVD:



A film called The Hoax was recently released based on Irving's story with Richard Gere as the lead: