Citizen Keane: The Big Lies Behind the Big Eyes

(Paperback)

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Description

The Keanes' teary, big-eyed orphans and many trashy knockoffs epitomised American kitsch art for decades. But decades of lawsuits and countersuits revealed the reality that Keane was more con man than artist, and that he forced his wife Margaret to sign his name to her work. Citizen Keane is a book-length expansion of Adam Parfrey's original 1992 Juxtapoz article, providing fascinating details, photographs, colour reproductions and appendices with legal documents and pseudonymous essays by Tom Wolfe inflating big eye art to those painted by the great masters.

Reviews

"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
"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

Author Bio

Cletus Nelson: Cletus Nelson is a contributor to books published by Process Media, The Disinformation Company, and Creation Press. Adam Parfrey is the editor of Apocalypse Culture, Apocalypse Culture II, It's a Man's World: Men's Adventure Magazines, the Postwar Pulps, and co-editor of Sin-a-Rama: Sleaze Paperbacks of the '60s. He is the co-writer (with Craig Heimbichner) of Ritual America: Secret Brotherhoods and their Influence on American Society, and (with Maja D'Aoust) The Secret Source: The Law of Attraction and its Hermetic Influence Throughout the Ages, (with Brendan Mullen and Don Bolles) 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.