Margaret Keane' the one time 'big eyes' wt illustrator, RIP.

waton

A creative person that got a lift from her touch and riding the wave of wt "first love" involvement, when living in Hawaii.

Anyone knows what happened in her later life? 1975 to 2022 ?

dropoffyourkeylee

Thanks for the post, I was unaware that she passed away recently (6/26). She was reportedly a JW, but I don't know her recent history.

Simon

There's a movie about her with Amy Adams in - I remember it being quite a good watch.

Terry

Check this thread out from about 8 years ago ...

https://www.jehovahs-witness.com/topic/286849/how-jehovahs-witness-participated-one-great-art-frauds-20th-century

Terry

Some more or less interesting facts about the ART BUSINESS I worked inside for a decade.

The art world is divided into buyers who know art intimately; knowledgeably.
There exists an enormous gulf. On the other end people who "Don't know anything about art, but who know what they like;" speculate a fantasy scenario.

Most fraud is perpetrated on people who gleefully "don't know anything about art."

“ I love it because it is good” may really only be: “It’s good because I love it.”

I met frauds, crooks, and flim-flam artists more than genuine artists during my ten years in the Los Angeles art community of galleries, private studios, design houses, and wealthy collectors

The problem comes down to how easy it is for certain people to dupe others.

There is considerable money to be made from the "know-nothings" who are easy to fool and manipulate.

I knew of a reputable dealer who bought 250 pieces of blank, hand-made, acid-free etching paper from Salvador Dali's personal art rep with only Dali's SIGNATURE on them.

Why?

The dealer paid a local atelier to run off lithos of Dali's earlier paintings . . . AS lithos and sell them as limited editions signed by the Master himself!

Incidentally, Dali would use actual flat-stone litho and not printing press style dot-matrix lithographs.

____________________

I once answered an ad for this 'reputable dealer' who promised me a 15% commission if I could sell the "original" Dali lithos.

I asked if I could take a sample of the work with me for a few days before I accepted the job.

The dealer agreed.

I showed them to an actor (and Dali expert) Alan Rich.

Rich stared at the signatures for about ten seconds without blinking.

He immediately spat out the words, "Pathetic forgery!"

_______________________

As it turned out, Dali's art agent was the fraud having faked the signature after Dali (his client) had lapsed into a senile state of mind and reneged on paying money owed. This was the agent’s form of self-justice!

Ahhh the stories I could tell!

_________________________

I was working in an Art Gallery (Billy Hork Galleries) in Beverly Hills for a while.

Celebrities came in often.

I sold a set of paintings (triptych) to Donald Sutherland who returned them a week later saying,

"The voices told me they aren't right." Do I know if he was pulling my chain? No.

Jon Voigt and I had a long chat at the gallery the day after he was a presenter at the Academy Awards. He was a very affable and natural person without any pretenses.

I sold Ron Howard a miniature of a scrawny bird painted by an Amish painter. He and his wife were together.

I said something which made him laugh. His wife giggled.

John Travolta and Marilu Henner came in together one evening. Travolta was eating ice cream. He was followed by about fifty people pretending they were NOT following him!

Yes--I kid you not. These were people acting too-cool-to-be-excited about movie stars, but who WERE excited enough to be following them everywhere they went!

I asked Travolta if he and Marilu wanted to exit out the back way.

He grinned and told me, "Nah--we're having fun with it."

Responsible Art Transactions vs Illicit

When you lead a person who wants to buy original art into Investing in mass-produced art, you are on the threshold of fraud unless you explain carefully exactly what it is they will own.

I observed some of the most successful art sales associates at work and their various levels of insidious coercion and manipulation.

The cunning sales associate advised or implied a particular piece "would appreciate" and become worth "more" the longer the buyer held on to it. This is not a claim that any art dealer can make factually. It is legal lying and opinion only.
I had many a buyer ask me if we (the Art Gallery itself)would buy back the art in the future. I explained why the answer was "no."
I carefully described the phenomena this way:

"If anybody knew for sure this art would go up in value--why in the world would we let go of it in the first place?

Galleries are in the RETAIL art business. The gamble is yours. Galleries buy low and sell high. Galleries can’t speculate and risk bankruptcy.

Exactly what does “ORIGINAL” actually mean?

First of all, FINE ART is “finished” art and has no purpose other than to exist as a thing itself. It is not decorative by intention. A substantial public interest in the artist must exist and a history of impressive selling prices tells the tale.
ORIGINAL art is defined this way.
“At its essence, original artwork is the art that is produced by an artist's hand. This definition excludes mechanical or digital copies, prints, and other reproductions. However, fraudulent copies can also be recreated by hand, so an original must be produced by hand by the original, authentic artist
I can assure you this is a bad definition. Were his able protoges.
At best, it is a nice try. The fact of the matter is quite a different reality.
Michelangelo’s famous Sistine Chapel, murals, and panels were often painted by others (based on his charcoal drawings.)
Bastiano da Sangallo, Giuliano Bugiardini, Agnolo di Donnino and Jacopo del Tedesco Were his able protoges.
Further, that ceiling has been constantly over-painted, restored, and touched up many times over the centuries by anonymous experts.

I worked in an Atelier with an artist who did not pull his own etching prints, hand color the plates, or watercolor the backgrounds. The rest of us did this.
His prints were not always self-autographed either. He taught an able assistant to do that chore when he was out of the studio.
High numbers or low numbers in a limited edition did not reflect the actual
The sequence of printed images either. All these matters are quite common among even the most famous artists in the world.

A multiple image etching or litho pulled one at a time in an atelier is virtually hand-made duplicates of the image itself. Each and every MULTIPLE is an original because---

the images don't BECOME ART until they transfer to paper to be examined and proofed by the artist and signed/numbered as an edition.

Failure to explain what LIMITED EDITION will mean for a PARTICULAR studio and a PARTICULAR run of art image.

Example: Limited Edition of 250 etchings which is truly LIMITED will result in that etching plate being SCRATCHED and DEFACED at the end of the edition so no FURTHER images can be pulled. However . . . the artist may well ALSO photograph the etching and reproduce it as a photo-litho edition as well.

Just because a painting is painted does not guarantee ANY value whatsoever. Value is imputed by the market. It can be ASSIGNED a virtual VALUE, but that is merely an ASKING price. When art is INSURED, the replacement value is what is considered. This can be manipulated by an out-sized RETAIL price. The actual "value" is the materials (wood frame, canvas, stretcher bar, nails, liner, etc.)

Just because an artist dies it does NOT mean the VALUE of any purchased artwork by that artist GOES UP AUTOMATICALLY in VALUE.

A “no-name” obscure artist cannot generate public appetite resulting in demand.

_______________________________

When I worked at TRIANGLE ART company, we had artists who designed "original paintings." The design itself originated with the designer - but - the actual painting was executed by a crew.

Fictional artists' names were fabricated including extensive and colorful dramatic biographies.
The company certified bogus "certificates of authenticity" purporting to guarantee the reality of the art, the artist, and the limit.

When Norman Rockwell died--the market for his artwork CRASHED and BURNED. Why? So-called “collectors” waited like vultures for the opportunity to SELL and cash in on that death.

Consequently: no buyers---only sellers!

___________________
This may be of interest to only a few people but I thought I'd share the above as a first-hand eyewitness and participant.

road to nowhere

Terry

Very interesting. Now, does Antiques Road Show know about this?

Terry

road to nowhere:

Antique Road Show is about as "on the level" as Pawn Stars. It's a SHOW before
anything else.

https://www.collectorsweekly.com/articles/what-it-really-takes-to-get-on-antiques-roadshow/

Sea Breeze

I toured the "Branch Office" in Hawaii in 1989. Yes, even though Hawaii is a State in the USA, the GB in their infinite wisdom saw fit to establish a branch office on this idyllic Pacific destination.

I was surprised to see many original pieces depicting her black-eyed kids (BEK) this artist was famous for hanging on the walls everywhere. I had never see artwork in any KH. The tour guide seemed impressed that a well-known artist would also be a JW. It must be the truth if a well-known artist who paints creepy alien-hybrid looking kids has joined, right?

Black Eyed Kids

Anyway, the paintings seemed odd and out of place for a "Christian" Center. Now, it all seems rather appropriate.

david_10

Hello Terry-------this has been a very interesting thread and I've enjoyed and learned a lot getting your broad perspective on the art world. I would like to know what you think of someone........oh, let's say Hunter Biden, for example......suddenly presenting himself as an artist and selling his paintings for thousands (if not HUNDREDS of thousands) of dollars. Is this on the up & up, or is it a little scammy? What do you think?

Margaret Keane' the one time 'big eyes' wt illustrator, RIP.

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