The waif’s kitsch repetitiveness created a space absent of intellectual discussion. Walter filled that void with this grand tale of pathos, spinning various versions of this story to journalists about why he painted big eyes:
I first started doing this after world war two when I was kind of tramping around France, Germany and the low-lands and I came upon these frightened waif-type children and they actually looked like rats running around, and they acted like it… I started painting this type of thing of these children, these children didn’t even seem to know why, these children didn’t even know how to talk, they couldn’t even pray… it’s sort of like an artist’s work, you don’t know how to talk about it but the painting can talk for you.1
Walter Keane
Of the fictional children of Europe Walter tells LIFE magazine, “My psyche was scarred… l wanted other people to know about those eyes, too. I want my paintings to clobber you in the heart and make you yell, ‘DO SOMETHING!’”3
The irony of this elaborate tale is that we remember it because a compelling alternative is not offered. We might also come away from Burton’s film – the most high-profile retelling of Margaret’s story to date – remembering only this lie that Walter sold, rather than gaining a new understanding of the motif in Margaret’s art.
To begin to try and understand more about Margaret’s inspiration we need to try and examine her in isolation from this theatre. This task is challenging because there are few interviews with Margaret that don’t, like Burton’s film, spend most of their time focused on their fight over authorship.
Margaret “Peggy” Dorris Hawkins (MDH) was born in 1927 in Nashville Tennessee. In 1945 aged 18, she attended Traphagen School of Design in New York. At 21 she married Frank Ulbrich, with whom she had a daughter Jane, they moved to California and separated. She then met Walter Keane, divorced Ulbrich, and the Keanes’ married in San Francisco in 1955. They travelled extensively during the height of their fame holding exhibitions of their work in Europe and Japan. They opened galleries on both US coasts. When they separated in 1964 Margaret settled in Hawaii where she would live for 26 years. During that time she divorced Walter and married Dan McGuire in 1966. She was reborn as a Jehovah’s witness in 1972. She returned to California around 1990 and continued to draw and paint (and sign her artwork MDH Keane) until her death in June of 2022 at the age of 94. Margaret left us her art – 60 years worth of it – and amongst it the story of her troubled relationship with Walter Keane.
Across Burton’s film, two unofficial biographies , (there is no official one) and over many newspaper stories and magazine interviews a bricolage of Margaret’s personality and likely muse can be formed.
In the press she was invariably described as an introvert: “Margaret, who is blonde and slim and quite as a mouse”4 and characterised as “a lithe, attractively modest woman.”5 Elsewhere it was said “Margaret Keane tends to be sensitive, shy, introspective.”6 and one media description even referred to her as “A pale blond cuddle of introspection.”7
Warner’s book mentions “stress and confusion” in Margaret’s early life and her discontentment. However, nowhere is what caused that stress and confusion elaborated on. In Parfrey’s book we hear that, “Margaret has always been reticent about discussing her life, particularly the years before she met Walter…Margaret rarely spoke about her pre-Walter days”, and referring to the period before her first marriage to Frank Ulbrich one profile states that, “She simply could not figure out why she was unhappy.”
Tim Burton, having made friends with Margaret years before his movie about her life, called her the “quietest feminist” but said “underneath, there was a spark.”8
But let’s suppose that spark was her drive to uncover the reasons for her long-standing unhappiness, the unhappiness that she felt long before her contentious relationship with Walter Keane.
A lengthy 1965 LIFE magazine profile of the Keanes’ barely scratches the surface of a hidden passion that surely must have been a very relevant inspiration to her as an artist. It notes that Margaret was, “…so gentle and unobtrusive except when conversation turns to the occult, a subject in which she is impressively well versed. Palmistry, astrology, numerology, and related disciplines fascinate her.”9 [emphasis added].
In 1975, years after ending her marriage to Walter, Margaret penned an article for Awake!, the globally circulated Jehovah’s Witness magazine where she reflected, “My road to popularity in the art world was a rocky one. There were two wrecked marriages and much mental anguish along the way.”10
However, this is not expanded upon. No other interviews go any deeper into the topic than this. We have no window into that “mental anguish” to better understand her, other than the big eyes of her paintings. She continues, again mentioning her interest in the occult:
I still had questions about life and God and they led me to search in strange and dangerous places for answers. I investigated the occult, astrology, palmistry, and even handwriting analysis, looking for answers. My love for art led me to investigate many ancient cultures and their philosophies, which were reflected in their art.
Margaret Keane
In a 1992 New York Times article she comments again about the questions that troubled her, and about the big eyes:
In the beginning, I didn’t know why I did them…They all have these large eyes. I was painting my own inner feelings. I was very sad and very confused about why there was so much sadness in the world and why God permitted wickedness.
Margaret Keane
Summary
- Walter provided the press with a rationale for their paintings
- The authenticity of this story was not questioned
- Margaret’s own philosophical interests went unexamined
Continue to Part 5 – A Hypothesis: Oahspe and the Shalam Colony
References
Footnotes
- 1964 LOST INTERVIEW WITH WALTER STANLEY KEANE, MARGARET KEANE, BIG EYES PAINTINGS, https://youtu.be/9WgStC6fvtM?t=93
- https://youtu.be/9WgStC6fvtM
- The Man Who Paints Those Big Eyes, LIFE, 27 August 1965
- Star-gazing, Honolulu Star-Bulletin, 21 August 1959
- Bohemians With a Mansion, The Peninsula Times Tribune, 18 January 1964
- Keanes Have Eye For Art That Makes ‘Em Tops, Orlando Evening Star, 28 September 1963
- KEANE Lithographs, catalouge, 1969
- Avenging the Big Lie Behind the Big Eyes, The New York Times, 19 December 2014
- The Man Who Paints Those Big Eyes, LIFE, 27 August 1965
- My Life as a Famous Artist, Awake! 8 July 1975