In this episode, Emma tells Olivia the story of toddler painter extraordinaire Marla Olmstead in the early aughts. This story is intertwined with an examination of the documentary about Marla and her family, My Kid Could Paint That, directed by Amir Bar-Lev and released in 2007. We discuss the question of whether four year old Marla or her father Mark were completing her prolific abstract paintings, as well as the question of whether or not a documentary can ever tell us the truth. We explore the idea of an uncorrupted mind in childhood, the current age of child stars and toddler TikTok-ers, and the tragedy of prodigy.

“It's not that there's no such thing as truth. But we come to like and trust a certain story… not necessarily because it's the most, absolutely truthful… but because it's a thing that we tell ourselves which makes sense of the world, at least at this moment.” -Michael Kimmelman, My Kid Could Paint That

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Sources

My Kid Could Paint That. Roma: Sony pictures home entertainment, 2008.

Morgan, Douglas N. “Must Art Tell the Truth?” The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 26, no. 1 (1967): 17–27. https://doi.org/10.2307/429241.

Varnedoe, Kirk. “Your Kid Could Not Do This, and Other Reflections on Cy Twombly.” MoMA, no. 18 (1994): 18–23. http://www.jstor.org/stable/4381274.

https://www.filminquiry.com/my-kid-could-paint-that-auteur/

https://imagejournal.org/2008/09/05/marla-really-paint-matter/

https://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/25/movies/25kid.html

In our Knoedler Gallery Fraud series finale, we discuss the end of the Knoedler Gallery, the arrest of one of the fraudsters, and explore the De Sole lawsuit extravaganza. We ask the question of what authenticity means within the art world and how important it truly is, from the walls of a prestigious gallery in New York to the Chinese village of Dafen where art reproductions were famously made by the hundreds. And of course, we armchair analyze the notorious Ann Freedman.

“And so art is dead, not only because its critical transcendence is gone, but because reality itself, entirely impregnated by an aesthetic which is inseparable from its own structure, has been confused with its own image.” - Jean Baudrillard, Simulations

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Sources

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/13/arts/fbi-art-crime-team.html

https://www.thestar.com/entertainment/visual-arts/david-mirvish-acknowledges-fakes-in-new-york-art-fraud-scandal/article_84b3ab29-c05b-5e0d-9a1d-b23b7a80e4fa.html

https://maddoxgallery.com/news/454-what-is-blue-chip-art/

https://itsartlaw.org/art-law/wywh-knoedler-trial-uncut-week-1/

https://www.clm.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/7830293_1-1.pdf

Varga, Somogy and Charles Guignon, "Authenticity", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2023 Edition), Edward N. Zalta & Uri Nodelman (eds.), URL = .

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/the-weekend-essay/what-if-readers-like-ai-generated-fiction

https://news.artnet.com/market/knoedler-fraud-trial-jack-flam-martha-parrish-419594

https://brooklynrail.org/2014/03/art/the-held-essays-on-visual-artin-defense-of-faking-it/#_edn1

https://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/03/opinion/sunday/in-praise-of-art-forgeries.html

https://hyperallergic.com/why-chinas-infamous-copycat-town-now-invests-in-original-artworks/

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/why-chinas-art-market-is-evolving-from-knockoffs-to-new-works

https://news.artnet.com/art-world/dafen-village-china-replicas-2672642

This week in The Vanishing Brief, we discuss some recent headlines in the art crime world including the recent Louvre Heist, a Picasso painting gone missing in transit, and a Nazi-looted painting discovered in an Argentine real estate listing.

“I am not murdered, and I am not missing, but parts of me have been disappeared.” - Leanne Simpson

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Sources

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/20/world/europe/france-louvre-jewel-heist.html

https://www.cnn.com/2025/10/19/europe/robbery-louvre-paris-france-museum-closure-intl

https://www.artnews.com/art-news/news/picasso-work-missing-madrid-granada-1234757797/

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/this-tiny-picasso-painting-went-missing-while-traveling-to-an-exhibition-in-spain-180987533/

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/19/world/europe/louvre-heist-items.html

https://www.artnews.com/art-news/news/louvre-museum-closed-staff-protest-inadequate-security-1234757928/

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/sep/06/18th-century-portrait-stolen-by-nazis-recovered-in-argentina

https://news.artnet.com/art-world/nazi-looted-portrait-real-estate-listing-argentina-2681421

https://hyperallergic.com/1051349/french-museum-reports-theft-one-day-after-louvre-heist/

https://hyperallergic.com/1051113/the-louvre-heist-was-a-colonial-wake-up-call/