Overview

Teary, big-eyed orphans and a multitude of trashy knockoffs epitomized American kitsch art as they clogged thrift stores for decades. When Adam Parfrey tracked down Walter Keane-the credited artist of the weepy waifs-for a San Diego Reader cover story in 1992, he discovered some shocking facts. Decades of lawsuits and countersuits revealed the reality that Keane was more of a con man than an artist, and that he forced his wife Margaret to sign his name to her own paintings. As a result, those weepy waifs may not have been as capricious an invention as they seemed. Parfrey's story was reprinted in Juxtapoz magazine and inspired a Margaret Keane exhibition at the Laguna Art Museum. Director Tim Burton made a movie about the Keanes called Big Eyes, which came out in 2014. Citizen Keane is a book-length expansion of Parfrey's original article, providing fascinating biographical and sociological details.

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9781504608169

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Here's the story of 'Big-Eyed Art'...I've been waiting for this book for twenty-five years. -- Long Gone John This stunning investigative report pulls back the curtain of maudlin decorative kitsch to reveal the hedonistic and depraved stylings of a true American mountebank. -- Frank Kozik, renowned graphic artist

This stunning investigative report pulls back the curtain of maudlin decorative kitsch to reveal the hedonistic and depraved stylings of a true American mountebank. -- Frank Kozik, renowned graphic artist Here's the story of 'Big-Eyed Art'...I've been waiting for this book for twenty-five years. -- Long Gone John

Author Information

Adam Parfrey is the editor of Apocalypse Culture, Apocalypse Culture II, It's a Man's World, and coeditor of Sin-a-Rama. He is the coauthor of Ritual America: Secret Brotherhoods and Their Influence on American Society, The Secret Source: The Law of Attraction and Its Hermetic Influence Throughout the Ages, and Lexicon Devil: The Fast Times and Short Life of Darby Crash and The Germs. Adam also wrote the compilation Cult Rapture, which contained his early feature article on the crazy Keane story. Cletus Nelson is a contributor to books published by Process Media, the Disinformation Company, and Creation Press. Bronson Pinchot, an Audie Award-winning narrator and Audible's Narrator of the Year for 2010, received his education at Yale University, which filled out what he had already received at his mother's knee in the all-important areas of Shakespeare, Greek art and architecture, and the Italian Renaissance. He restores Greek Revival buildings and appears in television, film, and on stage whenever the pilasters and entablatures overwhelm him.

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