‘Big Eyes' Painter Margaret Keane
-
Loading... - Cecile Sanchez
- 28 Oct 2022
- 61 Views
- 0 Like
- 0 Comment
Margaret Keane was embroiled in a legal battle over the rights to her work after her husband demanded a confession, a story told by Tim Burton in the 2014 film Big Eyes. According to her daughter, Jane Swigert, the artist passed away at home in Napa, California due to heart failure.
Born Peggy Doris Hawkins, Margaret Keane studied design in New York City before finding work painting cribs in the 1950s. Margaret Keane later moved on to her own art. She soon met Walter Keane in 1955. He discovered her signature paintings, sad children with saucer eyes, and began selling Margaret Keane’s big eyes paintings to comedy clubs. Convincing her that this was a more realistic solution, she agreed to have him pocket the credits, telling the Guardian in 2014 that it “tore” her apart.
the 1960s, the big eyes portraits were ubiquitous, with stars like Dean Martin and Joan Crawford buying originals.
Andy Warhol said at the time: “I think what Keane did is amazing. It should be good. If it was bad, a lot of people wouldn’t like it.”
But art historians were not impressed with Margaret Keane’s paintings. And in 1964 at the World’s Fair, a large-scale painting called “Tomorrow Forever” was called “tasteless hack” by the New York Times before it was immediately removed. Read More…
