Translated material
Was there a girl?
— When you took on this film, what intrigued you, as a documentarian, more - the girl’s creativity or the scandal that unfolded around her?
- I was interested in several things at once. First, the thought of a four-year-old celebrity. It seemed to me that a four-year-old artist was more interesting than a four-year-old math prodigy. Everything is more or less clear about a child who can count. He does it just like adults. With abstract art, everything is much more complicated - it is difficult to understand by what criteria we generally evaluate such painting. From here a variety of questions arose about what contemporary art is in general.
—During the course of filming, did you yourself form an opinion about who was the author of these works—the girl or her father?
- I’ll give you a strange answer. I have never found evidence of either. But I had serious doubts that the girl painted these pictures herself.
—Doesn’t it seem strange to you that, regardless of what the paintings themselves are, their value and the reaction of critics change dramatically when the suspicion arises that the author is not a child, but an adult?
- Now, if I tell you that this is a bottle (points to a bottle of beer) of Ernest Hemingway, and you really love Hemingway. And you shell out a ton of money for that bottle. And then you find out that it never belonged to him. It will be the same bottle, but you will feel cheated. It's the same with these paintings. They were valuable not only because of their aesthetic content, but largely due to the story behind each painting. And this story implied that the pictures were painted by a four-year-old girl.
- The question arises: what do people buy at auctions - an object of art or a context? Judging by your film, they are interested in the latter.
--Modern people are too focused on context. They don't trust their own feelings. They turn to curators, dealers, critics with a question: tell me, what is valuable here, what should I invest in? On the other hand, there are always people who say: I’ll look and judge for myself how close it is to me. But such people are in the minority.
- But the scandal surrounding this story is largely due to the fact that people invested money not in the paintings, but in the sensation, and when the sensation was under threat, it turned out that the works themselves were uninteresting.
- As far as I know, very few buyers demanded money back. When I show this film, approximately 75% of the audience leaves the show with confidence in what kind of girl the father drew. But 25% remain of the opinion that the child is a genius.
— It’s good that the film doesn’t answer the question of who the artist is here. Thus, the viewer can think about the simulative nature of modern art.
“Well, I didn’t create such a mysterious situation on purpose.” If I had precise evidence of one or the other, I would probably consider it dishonest to withhold this information from the viewer.
- But the simple viewer is primarily concerned with the question of who the hell painted this. So you could very well give him a “hint” during editing by nodding in one direction or another .
- Yes, I had evidence in my hands in favor of one option and the other. But that wouldn't be fair. An artist, in my opinion, must first of all obey the laws of morality. Many viewers are annoyed by such vague endings. But I told everything I knew, but I still couldn’t find an exact answer to the question everyone was interested in.
How did the members of this strange family behave during filming: were they open or were they playing a show in front of you?
“In the end, it seemed to me that they were manipulating me.” This family knew before me that there would be a show on television dedicated to their issue, and that I would be called there to give “testimony.” And they tried their best to prepare me for this show.
— How big a media story was this in America?
- A very noisy story - it was written about in all major world publications. At first it was a loud sensation, then a loud scandal.
— It seemed to me that the girl somehow felt too organic and free in front of the camera. She looks like a great actress. Usually children behave differently on camera; they are generally difficult to film.
- Excellent observation. Her parents kept telling me how reserved and shy she was. They convinced me that she would not be able to be in front of the camera. But it turned out that the girl really loves filming and feels absolutely natural on camera. She stopped being open and organic only when I asked about her paintings and how she paints them.
— It’s still strange that at the end you didn’t ask the viewer a counter question: why are objects of contemporary art valuable in general?
- For me, this film is not about who painted these pictures. I was asking myself broader questions, and an intelligent viewer should feel that. Having edited this story, I, oddly enough, became less skeptical of contemporary art. I have become more aware of abstraction. I spent a whole year filming for 84 minutes of film. And I felt that responsibility for each chosen episode hung over me: after all, it could tilt the viewer in one direction or another. And then I suddenly became envious of Jackson Pollock. Because he could smoke a cigarette and stick it in the center of the canvas to draw attention to a specific fragment.
— How did the members of this family react to your film ?
-- ABOUT! They were very angry. To this day I receive emails from the girl's father saying that I ruined his life.