![]() ![]() Burton, famed for bringing an extravagant vision and precision of design detail to movie remakes of The Pee-wee Herman Show, Batman and Planet of the Apes, has collected Keane since the 1990s and commissioned Margaret’s portraits of his serial leading ladies Lisa Marie and Helena Bonham Carter. Instead, today’s plutocrats invest in what was the low art of their childhoods - vintage comic books, Norman Rockwell illustrations and rock-star guitars - or in no art, like the Keanes. Wealthy people of the American mid-century would ornament their penthouses with Jackson Pollock’s splash panels, as emblems of the most refined taste money could buy. (She’s still active at 87.) Now this tale gets a superficial, DayGlo-bright paint-over in Tim Burton’s Big Eyes, with Amy Adams and Christoph Waltz as the battling spouses in the Keane family circus.įifty years after the onset of Keane-mania, high-art arbiters have lost their power. Those big eyes were his big lies - a scandal that remained a secret until Margaret Keane divorced Walter, went public in a 1970 radio interview and later won a lawsuit she brought against her delusional ex-husband. What Warhol and no one else knew in the ’60s was that Walter Keane, who built the business and took all the credit, wasn’t the artist his wife Margaret was. ![]() If it were bad, so many people wouldn’t like it.” “Keane” was the name on the phenomenally popular paintings of waifs with space-alien orbs that earned the ripe contempt of the critical establishment (back when there was one) and sold by the millions in originals, reproductions and knockoffs that flourished in every sidewalk art show from Malibu to Montmartre. The paintings are on view are from the Triton Museum’s permanent collection.“I think what Keane has done is just terrific,” Andy Warhol told Life magazine in 1965. And they just got bigger and bigger and bigger.” When I’m doing a portrait, the eyes are the most expressive part of the face. When asked about her motivation, Margaret says simply, “Children do have big eyes. Child abuse, considered a taboo subject, was addressed by the American Medical Association for the first very time in 1962. The United Nations General Assembly had only recently enacted the Declaration of the Rights of the Child, in 1959. Though empathy for the world’s children may seem commonplace today, it was uncommon in the 1960’s. Though her trademark Big Eyes style was generally considered by art critics to be sickeningly sentimental and kitsch, these pieces were created at a poignant and important moment in history. Margaret is one of the most prolific artist ever. Collected by fans worldwide, at 87 years old, Margaret continues to paint almost daily in Northern California. She first made her paintings famous in San Francisco’s North Beach in the 1950s. Margaret was awarded $4 million and the rightful ownership of her own works.īorn in 1927 in Nashville, Tennessee, Margaret loved to paint and draw since an early age. The case is culminated in a dramatic courtroom paint-off: Margaret painted a big-eyed child in 54 minutes flat Walter claimed a shoulder injury and refused to pick up the brush. She sued Walter for the rights to sell, sign, and distribute her own paintings. In 1986, Margaret shocked the world when she announced herself as the true artist behind Big Eyes. Walter himself became a talk show fixture and a household name, even bragging to TIME magazine, “Nobody painted eyes like El Greco, and nobody can paint eyes like Walter Keane.” Walter was a savvy marketer, and soon the Big Eyes prints were mass-produced and sold in hardware stores and gas stations worldwide. She painted big-eyed child after big-eyed child in her studio, while her husband Walter simply signed his name to the bottom of each canvas. But Margaret received no recognition for her unique style. Margaret Keane’s melancholy portraits of big-eyed children became phenomenally successful in the 1950’s and 1960’s-fans and collectors included Natalie Wood, Andy Warhol, Joan Crawford, Dean Martin, Jerry Lewis, and even the United Nations itself. The success of the Tim Burton film Big Eyes which tells the incredible story of American artist Margaret Keane, her scheming husband Walter Keane, and one of the greatest frauds of all time, has rekindled interest in her work, which has seen a resurgence in popularity and a Museum exhibition. ![]()
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