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.

No. 5, 1948

No, this is not my doodling with colored sharpies during one of the conference calls last week! This is a painting titled No. 5, 1948, created by Mr. Jackson Pollock. At $140 Million, it is the most expensive painting ever sold. Mr. Pollock is also known as 'Jack the Dripper'.

Instead of using the traditional easel he affixed his canvas to the floor or the wall and poured and dripped his paint from a can; instead of using brushes he manipulated it with `sticks, trowels or knives' (to use his own words), sometimes obtaining a heavy impasto by an admixture of `sand, broken glass or other foreign matter'.

The painting No. 5, 1948 falls under the category, Abstract Expressionism.

Abstract Expressionism does not describe any one particular style, but rather a general attitude; not all the work was abstract, nor was it all expressive. What these artists did have in common were morally loaded themes, often heavyweight and tragic, on a grand scale.

What this means to (the sceptic in) me is, this abstract expression movement had one hell of a marketing guy (or gal)! Here is one more product of abstract expression.

The 500-year old painting Mona Lisa still remains the most valuable painting with an estimated worth of well over $500 Million.