The painter Margaret Keane became a star in the USA in the 1960s. Her portraits of children appealed to a mass audience and hang in living rooms and doctors’ offices. Yer she is still unknown as an artist. This is mainly because her husband Walter took credit for the paintings. “Art made by women doesn’t sell” was his argument, and commercial success proves him correct. But the life of luxury proved to be a nightmare for Margaret: while Walter basks in the spotlight, his success is based on lies that he soon himself starts to believe. And Margaret stays living in his shadow and paints one picture after the other – without being properly acknowledged as the artist she is.
BIG EYES begins with the statement “Based on a true story” and this initally does not sound at all like a Tim Burton with his soft spot for the gloomy and grotesque. But then one just has to look at Margaret Keane’s paintings: Images of girls and boys with “crazily large eyes“. These children have either seen too much, are aliens or come right out of Tim Burton’s universe. In BIG EYES, Burton focuses once again on a real-life artist reviled by the contemporary art world. Though BIG EYES is more ED WOOD as SWEENEY TODD, albeit with new faces. Instead of Johnny Depp there is Christoph Waltz, who plays Walter with diabolical charm with his perma-grin. Amy Adams plays the timid 1950s/60s housewife nearly crushed by her own captivity. BIG EYES tells the story of one woman’s emancipation, who fought for her individual and artistic freedom – and yes, it’s also freedom to paint pictures of morbid kitsch.

Kirsten Taylor

Translation: Carla MacDougall