Pint-Sized Pollock?

Marla Olmstead made her first abstract painting while still in diapers, crouching on her parents' dining-room table. She was not yet 2. Her big break came when she was 3, and a family friend hung her paintings in a coffee shop in her hometown of Binghamton, N.Y. By the time she was 4, she was scarfing down cookies at the packed opening of her first solo gallery show. A local reporter covered the story, and the New York Times picked it up. Soon, news crews from all over were rushing to report on the adorable blond moppet and her colorful canvases, calling her a "budding Picasso," a "pint-sized Pollock." Within a few months, she sold more than $300,000 worth of paintings.

I don't think that I will ever understand the art world. Just before Marla's 5th birthday, CBS reported that her dad probably was helping out on her paintings. That's it! Her paintings suddenly became pretty much worthless. So, the value of the art was in the associated story (like in Whistler's Mother?!) rather than in the beauty (which I fail to see, to begin with) of creation.