2014.11.07 是什么让一个孩子成为艺术神童？

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What Makes a Child an Art Prodigy?
The paintings of seven-year-old Aelita Andre have sold for tens of thousands of dollars, raising the question of what separates true, precocious genius from mere youthful creativity with hype.

By Jacoba Urist

Nikka Andre
NOVEMBER 7, 2014
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Stand before any abstract painting—try a Jackson Pollock or a Cy Twombly— and it’s inevitable someone will say: My child could have done that. For many, the dripping splatters or scribbles seem haphazard and simplistic, not unlike something an average toddler might do with a set of finger paints. And as contemporary art becomes more conceptual, it’s harder to know what makes a piece of art great: the object itself, the story behind it, or both? Seven-year-old Australian abstract painter Aelita Andre, whose latest exhibition opened in Manhattan last week, embodies what one art historian calls the “my kid could do that” impulse. Once again, the media seems taken with the idea that a child’s art may be a joke on a self-important art world.


But Aelita’s journey to the center of the New York art scene raises deeper questions about what actually makes a prodigy and to what extent the artist even matters. Are her pieces only here, in one of the most influential art markets— and reportedly selling for five-figure sums—because she’s so young? Must a prodigy eventually break new ground? Be able to reflect on her work? Are prodigies culturally determined or are there scientific criteria?

When I arrive at the 18th Street gallery two blocks west of Chelsea’s blue-chip art district, Aelita seems like a typical little girl in bright pink sneakers. She runs from a back room, energetic and shy. It is the day before the opening of “Oracle of Space," her third, solo New York show (her last was in June 2012). This time, her current gallery is calling it a "pop-up" exhibition, since it runs only for a week, with the pieces then stored on Mott street for potential buyers to view. Aelita’s parents tell me she’s still jetlagged and wakes them at 3:30 a.m., ready to the start the day. Her canvases, some of which incorporate glitter and tiny, plastic dinosaurs—the kind you might find in a child’s party favor—are already labeled with whimsical, precocious titles like “The Dome of the Dinosaur Spa” and “Rainbow Splash And The Fish Feather.” Her mother is adamant that Aelita names each painting unassisted.

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On the advice of my five-year old son, since it’s Halloween week, I’ve brought the artist a red, candy Ring Pop she plays with or sucks on for most of our time together. My son has also given me a list of questions for Aelita, which I sprinkle during my adult ones. Have you seen Frozen? Yes. Do you like princesses? Not all, only the really strong ones. Who are your favorite artists? Well, you and daddy, pointing to her parents, a photographer and a filmmaker. What do you want to be when you grow up? A paleontologist and a painter.

As the story goes, Aeilta started painting before she could walk. According to her Australian father Michael Andre, at around nine months, she crawled onto a canvas of his and started “smearing paints around.” Within a year, Aelita had amassed a collection of over 60 paintings in the family’s home. When Aelita was 19 or 20 months, her Russian-born mother Nikka Kalashnikova decided to show some of her daughter’s work “on a whim” to Mark Jamieson, the director of a commercial gallery in Melbourne that represented her own photography.

“I just looked at [Aelita’s paintings] and thought it was something really amazing,” Kalashnikova recalled. “I simply told the curator she’s a female artist. After all, you never walk into a gallery and say, this artist is 24 or this one is 84. I wanted Aelita’s work judged on its own merits.” Kalashnikova admits she felt “strange and silly” with a baby’s portfolio. “I thought this is probably all in my imagination,” she said. “And of course, I’m biased because I’m her mother.”

But Jamieson immediately wanted to include the toddler’s work in an upcoming group exhibition, along several of Kalashnikova’s photographs. It was only when Jamieson started promoting Aelita’s art in magazines that Kalashnikova says she had to come clean about the artist’s true identity. At that point, Jamieson “consulted with his colleagues” to determine whether he should show a child’s paintings—and, according to Aelita’s parents, ultimately decided that the work spoke for itself, regardless of the painter’s age.

A child who is a prodigy has a "rage to master,” an obsession to conquer the craft and spend hours honing his or her skills.
Less than two years after the bottom of the financial crisis, four-year-old Aelita had progressed to a three-week solo exhibition, “Prodigy of Color,” at Chelsea’s Agora Gallery.

The show included 24 paintings, all of which reportedly sold for between $4,000 and $10,000— not eye-popping prices in Chelsea, but certainly so for a preschooler with no formal art training. The following June, the Agora Gallery ran a second solo Aelita show, “Secret Universe,” and the artist beat her previous record, when one of the canvases garnered over $12,000. Gallery materials described Aelita's work as “complex yet accessible, sophisticated yet unguided,” and mentioned that her first show sold out in seven days. The family says Aelita’s highest sale to date has been a 60 by 153 inch acrylic painting titled “Birch Forest in Space,” to an independent collector for $50,000.

* * *
“On the surface, abstract art by painters like Jackson Pollock and Cy Twombly might look similar to child art or art done by monkeys and chimps,” said Dr. Ellen Winner, chair of psychology at Boston College and senior associate at Harvard Graduate School of Education’s Project Zero, a research group that studies the nature of intelligence and creativity. But in a 2011 study published in Psychological Science, Winner found that adults, untrained in the visual arts, were able to distinguish abstract work by professional artists—vetted by museum curators and art history textbooks—from “strikingly similar works made by untrained children and nonhuman animals” like elephants. While participants did not select the professional artist 100 percent of the time, people’s correct choice of adult or human work was significantly above chance—challenging the common claim that abstract art is no better than that of an ordinary child.

Winner is also the author of “Gifted Children: Myths and Realities” and more than 100 articles about child psychology and cognition in the arts. And while all children might make “beautiful art,” a child who is a prodigy has what Winner calls a "rage to master,” an obsession to conquer the craft and spend hours honing his or her skills. Typically however, child prodigies draw realistically, not abstractly, and they don’t have any interest in sharing their work.

Dr. Jennifer E. Drake, an assistant professor of psychology at Brooklyn College of the City University of New York and Dr. Winner’s co-author of the Scientific American Mind article “How to Spot Artistic Brilliance,” describes a seven-year old drawing prodigy she studied. “Prodigies have an intense drive to draw. They want to draw the minute they get up and the minute they get home from school,” Dr. Drake explained. “They don’t care about showing their art.” One seven-year-old drew “complicated transformers” in a highly realistic manner on a white board, and then simply erased it and started all over again, propelled by some internal drive.

Drake’s recent research also found that the ability to draw hyper-realistically— created by children she calls precocious realists—is neither a function of IQ, age, gender, or training. As she describes it, precocious realists have the ability to immediately zone in on the details, as opposed to first sketching in the overall shapes. Drake sees a clear division between someone who is gifted and someone who is a prodigy.

It turns out, unlike math, music, and chess prodigies, child art prodigies are the hardest to find, according to Dr. Joanne Ruthsatz, professor of psychology at Ohio State University and author of the forthcoming book, “The Prodigy’s Cousin: One Psychologist’s Amazing Story of the Link Between Autism and Genius.” She tracks more than 30 prodigies, but has only five art prodigies in her group. While she can’t disclose who’s in the cohort, she can say Aelita is not—although she’s highly interested in meeting her.

“I have seen her art online and I do think she’s a prodigy,” said Ruthsatz, who assures skeptics that “stage parents” can’t mold a child prodigy. Prodigies have a nature component that all the nurturing in the world can’t compensate for. “There is a biological difference that kicks in with these kids and they become obsessed with their work and want to engage in their art or play the piano all the time, even though they are ordinary kids in the sandbox.”

Prodigies have a nature component that all the nurturing in the world can’t compensate for.
From the start of Aelita’s career, it appears that her family has tried to document her “rage to master,” producing time-lapse videos so viewers can witness the artist painting a canvas from start to finish. In one video, Aelita proclaims, “I will paint for 24 hours.” While her father is a filmmaker, it’s difficult to ignore the context. A decade ago, there was an abstract child artist named Marla Olmstead, who by age four was similarly hailed in the Chelsea art world as an art prodigy. The situation changed when 60 Minutes was allowed to install a hidden camera to observe the little girl painting in her basement. After witnessing the footage, Dr. Ellen Winner told 60 Minutes she saw no evidence of a child prodigy, but rather, “a normal, charming, adorable child painting the way a preschooler might,” except that she had a coach (in this case, maybe her father) to keep her going. In other words, Winner didn’t see signs of the “rage to master.”

The contrast between child and artist is on full display at Aelita's art opening. Her latest exhibition is comprised of 18 new pieces, ranging from $6,000 to $21,000 dollars, including her first collection of sculptures—a series of painted violins ($3,500) and a metal foil unicorn ($6,000), which her press materials say conjures “the finest work of the Italian sculptor Alberto Giacometti.” (Incidentally, a week after her opening, Sotheby's breaks an auction record, selling a Giacometti for $101 million dollars.) So far, according to Laura O'Reilly, director of Gallery 151 paintings have sold and seven are on hold.
At the outset, Aelita is charming bloggers, talking animatedly about her love of dinosaurs and painting. But like any normal seven-year-old, as the night wears on, she behaves much like I would have feared my five-year-old at an evening art event. At one point, she runs around the back of the gallery shrieking (a guest remarks it sounds like a haunted house). At another, she takes an entire block of cheese from the tray to eat with her hands. When it’s time to participate in a video interview and assess printouts of some of the greatest modern artists’ work, Aelita wants to clutch a stuffed bear on her lap.

And like many parents, hers seem to take it in stride when not all goes as planned because she’s too tired to play on one of her painted violin canvases for the press as scheduled. “I couldn’t imagine an adult doing this artwork,” Michael Andre tells me.

“To be honest, she doesn’t care about all of this and being on television,” Kalashnikova explains. “It’s not about that for her. She’s a child, and she just wants to paint all the time.”

"You find prodigies where cultures care to look for them."
For better or worse, the definition of prodigy is the mastery of something highly complex or culturally valued at a young age, usually under 10, said Dr. David Henry Feldman of Tufts University, who is largely credited as the grandfather of modern prodigy research. “It’s nature conspiring with culture,” he explained, “a combination of personal qualities these children have at a very young age, enormous discipline and patience, as well as their parents’ desire to nurture and foster their natural abilities. But you find prodigies where cultures care to look for them.”


His research also shows that intelligence scores can vary tremendously among prodigies. For example, it appears that an art prodigy only requires a modest IQ, whereas math prodigies, overall, have considerably higher intellect than the general population. That said, Dr. Feldman cautions to take all prodigy research with a grain of scientific salt. “Remember, we are talking about a tiny, tiny field of work, maybe 50 cases worldwide.”

Pablo Picasso is probably history’s most recognized child art prodigy, finishing Le Picador, of a man riding a horse in a bullfight, at age nine. Picasso is also famous for allegedly saying, “It took me four years to paint like Raphael, but a lifetime to paint like a child.” Perhaps like Picasso, Aelita’s art journey has just begun and she will emerge as one of the most innovative or influential artists of the 21st century. Perhaps, she will buck art prodigy tradition—to the extent that there is any— and flip-flop to become an acclaimed realist, like Andrew Wyeth. Or perhaps she’ll be a paleontologist, with quite a story about her childhood.

Jacoba Urist is a writer based in New York. Her work has appeared in New York magazine, Newsweek, and Smithsonian Magazine.




是什么让一个孩子成为艺术神童？
七岁的Aelita Andre的画作已经卖出了数万美元，这就提出了一个问题：是什么将真正的、早熟的天才与单纯的青春创造力区别开来？

雅各巴-乌里斯特报道

尼卡-安德烈
2014年11月7日

站在任何一幅抽象画前--试试杰克逊-波洛克或赛-汤伯利的作品--难免会有人说。我的孩子可以做到这一点。对许多人来说，那些滴落的飞溅物或涂鸦似乎是杂乱无章的、简单的，与普通幼儿用手指画的东西没什么区别。而随着当代艺术变得更加概念化，我们更难知道是什么让一件艺术作品变得伟大：物体本身，它背后的故事，还是两者都是？七岁的澳大利亚抽象画家Aelita Andre，其最新展览上周在曼哈顿开幕，体现了一位艺术史学家所说的 "我的孩子也能做到 "的冲动。媒体似乎又一次认为，孩子的艺术可能是对自视甚高的艺术界的一个玩笑。


但Aelita进入纽约艺术界中心的旅程提出了更深层次的问题，即什么是真正的神童，艺术家在多大程度上是重要的。她的作品在这里，在最有影响力的艺术市场之一，而且据说卖到了五位数的价格，是因为她太年轻了吗？一个神童最终必须有新的突破吗？能否对她的作品进行反思？神童是由文化决定的还是有科学的标准？

当我到达切尔西蓝筹艺术区以西两个街区的第18街画廊时，Aelita似乎是一个典型的穿着亮粉色运动鞋的小女孩。她从后面的房间跑出来，精力充沛而又羞涩。这是 "空间的神谕 "开幕的前一天，这是她的第三次纽约个展（她的上一次是在2012年6月）。这一次，她现在的画廊称其为 "弹出式 "展览，因为它只持续一周，然后将作品存放在莫特街上，供潜在的买家观看。艾丽塔的父母告诉我，她还在倒时差，凌晨3点半就叫醒他们，准备开始新的一天。她的画作，其中一些加入了闪光剂和小的塑料恐龙--你可能会在孩子的派对礼物中找到的那种--已经被贴上了异想天开、早熟的标题，如 "恐龙温泉的穹顶 "和 "彩虹飞溅和鱼的羽毛"。她的母亲坚持认为，艾莉塔在没有人帮助的情况下为每幅画命名。

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在我五岁儿子的建议下，因为今天是万圣节周，我给艺术家带来了一个红色的糖果环形流行音乐，她在我们相处的大部分时间里都在玩耍或吸吮。我的儿子也给了我一个针对艾丽塔的问题清单，我在我的成人问题中撒了这些问题。你看过《冰雪奇缘》吗？是的。你喜欢公主吗？不是全部，只有真正强大的公主。你最喜欢的艺术家是谁？嗯，你和爸爸，指着她的父母，一个摄影师和一个电影制片人。你长大后想做什么？一个古生物学家和一个画家。

正如故事所言，艾尔塔在会走路之前就开始画画了。据她的澳大利亚父亲迈克尔-安德烈说，大约9个月时，她爬到他的画布上，开始 "把颜料涂来涂去"。在一年内，艾莉塔在家里积累了60多幅画作的收藏。当艾莉塔19或20个月大时，她在俄罗斯出生的母亲尼卡-卡拉什尼科娃 "一时兴起 "决定向马克-贾米森展示她女儿的一些作品，贾米森是墨尔本一家商业画廊的负责人，他代理她自己的摄影作品。

"我只是看了看[Aelita的画]，觉得那是非常了不起的东西，"卡拉什尼科娃回忆说。"我简单地告诉策展人她是一位女性艺术家。毕竟，你从来没有走进一个画廊，说这个艺术家是24岁，这个是84岁。我想让Aelita的作品根据其自身的优点进行评判。" 卡拉什尼科娃承认，她对一个婴儿的作品集感到 "奇怪和愚蠢"。"我想这可能都是我的想象，"她说。"当然，我也有偏见，因为我是她的母亲。"

但贾米森立即想把这个孩子的作品和卡拉什尼科娃的几张照片一起列入即将举办的群展。当贾米森开始在杂志上宣传Aelita的艺术时，卡拉什尼科娃才说她不得不坦白这位艺术家的真实身份。那时，贾米森 "咨询了他的同事"，以确定他是否应该展示一个孩子的画作--据艾丽塔的父母说，最终决定，无论画家的年龄如何，作品本身就能说明问题。

神童的孩子有一种 "掌握的愤怒"，痴迷于征服工艺，花时间磨练自己的技能。
金融危机见底后不到两年，四岁的艾丽塔就在切尔西的阿戈拉画廊举办了为期三周的个展 "色彩的神童"。

该展览包括24幅画作，据说所有这些画作的售价在4000至10000美元之间--在切尔西不是令人瞠目结舌的价格，但对于一个没有受过正规艺术训练的学龄前儿童来说，肯定是如此。第二年6月，阿戈拉画廊举办了艾莉塔的第二次个人画展 "秘密宇宙"，艺术家打破了她之前的记录，其中一幅画作获得了超过12000美元。画廊的材料将艾丽塔的作品描述为 "复杂而又易懂，复杂而又无指导性"，并提到她的第一次展览在七天内就卖光了。家人说，艾莉塔迄今为止的最高销售额是一幅60乘153英寸的丙烯酸画，名为 "太空中的白桦林"，以5万美元的价格卖给了一位独立收藏家。

* * *
"从表面上看，杰克逊-波洛克和赛-汤伯利等画家的抽象艺术可能看起来与儿童艺术或猴子和黑猩猩的艺术相似，"波士顿学院心理学主席、哈佛大学教育研究生院 "零点计划 "高级助理Ellen Winner博士说，该研究小组负责研究智力和创造力的本质。但在2011年发表在《心理科学》上的一项研究中，Winner发现，没有接受过视觉艺术训练的成年人能够区分专业艺术家的抽象作品--经博物馆馆长和艺术史教科书审查--与未经训练的儿童和大象等非人类动物的 "惊人的相似作品"。虽然参与者没有百分之百地选择专业艺术家，但人们对成人或人类作品的正确选择明显高于偶然性--挑战了抽象艺术并不比普通儿童的作品好的普遍说法。

维纳也是《天才儿童》的作者。神话与现实》以及100多篇关于儿童心理学和艺术认知的文章。虽然所有的孩子都可能做出 "美丽的艺术"，但神童有Winner所说的 "渴望掌握"，痴迷于征服工艺并花时间磨练自己的技能。然而，通常情况下，神童的画是写实的，而不是抽象的，而且他们对分享他们的作品没有任何兴趣。

纽约市立大学布鲁克林学院的心理学助理教授珍妮弗-E-德雷克博士和《科学美国人》心灵文章《如何发现艺术的辉煌》的作者之一，描述了她研究的一个七岁的绘画神童。"神童们有一种强烈的绘画动力。他们一起床，一放学回家就想画画，"德雷克博士解释说。"他们不关心展示他们的艺术。" 一个七岁的孩子在白板上以高度逼真的方式画了 "复杂的变压器"，然后在某种内在动力的推动下，干脆把它擦掉，重新开始。

德雷克最近的研究还发现，由她称之为早熟的现实主义者的儿童所创造的超现实的绘画能力，既不是智商、年龄、性别或训练的功能。正如她所描述的，早熟的现实主义者有能力立即将注意力集中在细节上，而不是先勾勒出整体的形状。德雷克认为有天赋的人和神童之间有一个明确的划分。

事实证明，与数学、音乐和国际象棋神童不同，儿童艺术神童是最难找到的，据俄亥俄州立大学心理学教授、即将出版的《神童的表妹》一书的作者乔安-鲁斯萨兹博士说。一位心理学家关于自闭症和天才之间联系的神奇故事"。她追踪了30多个神童，但她的小组中只有五个艺术神童。虽然她不能透露谁在这个小组中，但她可以说艾莉塔不在其中--尽管她对见到她非常感兴趣。

"我在网上看过她的艺术作品，我确实认为她是一个神童，"鲁斯萨兹说，她向怀疑者保证，"舞台父母 "无法塑造一个神童。神童有一个自然成分，世界上所有的培养都无法弥补。"这些孩子有一种生理上的差异，他们会对自己的工作着迷，想一直从事自己的艺术或弹钢琴，尽管他们是沙盘上的普通孩子。"

神童有一个自然成分，世界上所有的培养都无法弥补。
从艾莉塔的职业生涯开始，她的家人似乎一直试图记录她的 "从愤怒到精通"，制作延时视频，让观众见证艺术家从头到尾画一幅画。在一个视频中，艾莉塔宣称，"我将画24小时"。虽然她的父亲是一位电影制片人，但很难忽视其背景。十年前，有一个名叫玛拉-奥姆斯特德的抽象儿童艺术家，他在四岁时同样被切尔西艺术界誉为艺术神童。当《60分钟》杂志被允许安装一个隐藏的摄像机来观察这个小女孩在她的地下室作画时，情况发生了变化。Ellen Winner博士在看过录像后告诉《60分钟》，她没有看到神童的证据，而是 "一个正常的、迷人的、可爱的孩子在以学龄前儿童的方式作画"，只是她有一个教练（在这种情况下，可能是她的父亲）让她坚持下去。换句话说，Winner没有看到 "愤怒的主人 "的迹象。

孩子和艺术家之间的对比在艾莉塔的艺术开幕式上得到了充分的展示。她的最新展览由18件新作品组成，价格从6000美元到21000美元不等，包括她的第一个雕塑系列--一系列彩绘小提琴（3500美元）和一个金属箔独角兽（6000美元），她的新闻资料说这是 "意大利雕塑家阿尔贝托-贾科梅蒂的最优秀作品"。(顺带一提，在她的开幕式后一周，苏富比拍卖行打破了拍卖纪录，以1.01亿美元的价格售出了贾科梅蒂的作品）。据画廊主任劳拉-奥莱利（Laura O'Reilly）说，到目前为止，已有151幅画售出，7幅画被搁置了。
一开始，艾丽塔是迷人的博主，生动地谈论着她对恐龙和绘画的热爱。但是，像任何正常的七岁孩子一样，随着夜幕的降临，她的行为很像我担心我的五岁孩子在晚上的艺术活动中的表现。有一次，她在画廊的后面跑来跑去，大喊大叫（一位客人说这听起来像个鬼屋）。还有一次，她从托盘上拿起一整块奶酪，用手吃。当要参加视频采访和评估一些最伟大的现代艺术家作品的打印件时，艾莉塔想把一只毛绒玩具熊抱在腿上。

而且，像许多父母一样，当她因为太累而无法按计划为媒体演奏她画的一幅小提琴帆布画时，她的父母似乎也能泰然处之。"我无法想象一个成年人会做这种艺术品，"迈克尔-安德烈告诉我。

"说实话，她并不关心这一切和上电视，"卡拉什尼科娃解释说。"对她来说，这不是为了这个。她是个孩子，她只想一直画下去。"

"你可以在文化人关心的地方找到神童"。
塔夫茨大学的大卫-亨利-费尔德曼博士说，无论好坏，神童的定义是在年轻时掌握高度复杂或文化价值的东西，通常在10岁以下，他被认为是现代神童研究的祖父。他解释说："这是自然与文化的合谋，""这些孩子在很小的时候就拥有的个人素质的组合，巨大的纪律和耐心，以及他们的父母对培育和培养他们自然能力的愿望。但是，你可以在文化人关心的地方找到神童"。


他的研究还表明，神童之间的智力分数可以有巨大的差异。例如，艺术神童似乎只需要适度的智商，而数学神童，总的来说，智力比一般人高得多。尽管如此，费尔德曼博士警告说，要用科学的眼光看待所有神童的研究。"记住，我们谈论的是一个很小很小的工作领域，也许全世界有50个案例。"

巴勃罗-毕加索可能是历史上最公认的艺术神童，他在9岁时完成了《Le Picador》，画的是一个人在斗牛中骑马。据称，毕加索还因说："我花了四年时间才画得像拉斐尔，但花了一辈子时间才画得像个孩子 "而闻名。也许像毕加索一样，艾莉塔的艺术之旅才刚刚开始，她将成为21世纪最具创新或影响力的艺术家之一。也许，她会违背艺术神童的传统--如果有的话--翻转过来，成为一个广受赞誉的现实主义者，像安德鲁-怀斯一样。或者，她会成为一名古生物学家，有一个关于她的童年的故事。

Jacoba Urist是一位驻纽约的作家。她的作品曾出现在《纽约》杂志、《新闻周刊》和《史密森尼》杂志上。