A Keane eye for art

It's a truism that there are many art worlds but Tim Burton has just made a movie about one that is about as far away as you can get from the version presented by the public museums. It's based on the life of an artist Burton collects himself, in fact he even commissioned her do a portrait of his ex wife Lisa-Marie holding a pet dog. Yes, we're talking bug-eye painter Margaret Keane. She turns out to have had a movie script life with a husband who stole her identity and claimed that he was the one who'd painted the popular pneumatically pupiled ones. Keane has since won her rights back through the courts and of course has a website where you can see the full range of her output. In Burton’s movie Big eyes she is played by Amy Adams with Christoph Waltz as the mine-all-mine husband.  With the film about to open Keane’s sales have picked up and other celebs are at her door like Japanese models willing to pay big bucks for the eye-widening experience.

Images: top left, Amy Adams as Margaret Keane and right, Christoph Waltz as her husband Walter. Middle, the other art world does a cameo with David Smith-like sculptures. Bottom left, the real Mrs Keane with her portrait of Joan Collins and right, the Keane portrait of Lisa-Marie commissioned by Big eyes director Tim Burton