Another Little Picasso

Also: Jason Guriel misses being bored at the mall. Ted Gioia predicts the future of music.

Via Wikimedia Commons

In the New York Times, Alex Hawgood writes about how Cubist knock-offs by a 10-year-old fetched $230,000 at a recent show. This is evidence, according to the gallery owner showing his work (of course), of a great new talent. More likely it is evidence of his parents’ greed.

I say that because they apparently hired a publicist to help launch the boy’s career and have pushed articles with big photos of him in front of his work to the Miami Herald, the New York Post, Forbes, and the London Times. ABC did a segment on him. His mother claims that “My son is an artist, but he is a child first . . . He is a child, not a celebrity.” But he is a celebrity because she made him one.

She also says that the money her son is earning is just an opportunity to teach him “to give back” and claims that more than $300,000 from her son’s sales has been given to charity. But I wonder if this isn’t just another way to increase the value of her son’s work. What’s better than a child prodigy? A generous child prodigy who supports AIDS research, of course.

It is also evidence of the lack of standards in the art world.