My Kids Could Do That: Famous Artists Put Their Childhood Drawings on view in LA
Openning Event: April 6th, 2018 at 7PM, on view through April 8th
1301PE artists, Petra Cortright, Diana Thater & Pae White are contributing works to this event.
How many times have you overheard—when standing in front of a contemporary work of art—a proud parent/disdainful viewer near you invoke the dismissive cliché: “my kid could do that?” Or maybe you’ve been guilty of thinking it yourself. We should all be so lucky to bear little geniuses that might grow up into the next Ed Ruscha, but sadly only a very small number ever reach that level. And those that do aren’t usually too quick to equate their career’s work with the output of a child.
So it’s unusual then, that a number of big-name contemporary U.S. artists—Ruscha, Jim Shaw, Lita Albuquerque, Catherine Opie, Diana Thater, Kenny Scharf, Alex Israel and Pae White among them—have decided to contribute their work to an exhibition named exactly that. But they’re not showing just any old work, they’re showing their old work—the art they made as children, lovingly preserved or perhaps rediscovered after languishing in boxes by their very own proud parents. Flying in the face of the idea that their geniuses are one in a million, these artists are putting their early scribbles on view in order to say: “Yes, your kid could do that.”
Opening April 6 at Los Angeles’ Underground Museum and on view for just three days, it’s part of a fundraising effort to raise support for ProjectArt, a nonprofit dedicated to making arts education available to children throughout the country by partnering with the public libraries for the use of space and hiring emerging artists as instructors. In spreading their mission, the organization recruited some of the most influential artists working today to talk about how art education got them to where they are today.