I love it that a two-year-old’s paintings have created such a buzz. His brush with branding, less so

I f you’ve ever spent £40 and a whole weekend trying to paint out the scrawling of your young children from your rental walls in the futile hope that this will save your £1,300 deposit, you may greet the following news as I did: with a noise somewhere between a hot-water bottle being emptied and a cry of pain.

A Bavarian toddler, known already within the art world as Laurent Schwarz, has reportedly just landed himself a hefty brand deal with the German paint manufacturer Relius to create a range of colours, and another, separate deal with a wallpaper company – worth, presumably, thousands – all inspired by his own artwork.

Some of Laurent’s acrylic paintings have sold for more than £5,000, with his mother, Lisa, promising that every penny goes into a savings account. Dubbed the “pint-sized Picasso”, Schwarz is said to have a waiting list of hundreds of potential buyers, and has already exhibited his first solo show.

The story, of course, raises those age-old questions about aesthetics: what divides true art from simple decoration? Is there such a thing as talent, or is it all just a matter of interpretation? Who owns a work of art, and who has the agency of its creation? It also forces searing recognition of the sheer state of wealth inequality in modern society. At a time when, according to the German federal statistical office, Statisches Bundesamt, just over 17.3 million people in Germany – about 20.9% of the population – are living in or at risk of poverty and social exclusion, there is still plenty of money, it seems, among those who have it, to spend on lovely things like paintings and interior decor.

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