Qui est véritablement l'artiste des enfants aux grands yeux ?

The big-eyed children: the extraordinary story of an epic art fraud

In the 1960s, Walter Keane was feted for his sentimental portraits that sold by the million. But in fact, his wife Margaret was the artist, working in virtual slavery to maintain his success. She tells her story, now the subject of a Tim Burton biopic

A fraud = une imposture, une escroquerie
Slavery = esclavagisme
A biopic = un film biographique

There’s a sweet, small suburban house in the vineyards of Napa, northern California. Inside, a family of Jehovah Witnesses bustles around, offering me a cheese plate. A Siamese cat weaves in and out of my legs. Everything is lovely. Sitting in the corner is 87-year-old Margaret Keane. “Would you like some macadamia nuts?” she asks. She hands me Jehovah Witness pamphlets too. “Jehovah looks after me every day,” she says. “I really feel it.”She is the last person you’d expect to be a participant in one of the great art frauds of the 20th century.
Jehovah witnesses = des témoins de Jéhovah
To bustle = s’affairer
A cheese plate = une assiette de fromage
To weave in and out = se faufiler entre
A nut = une noix
To hand = tendre
To look after = s’occuper de

This story begins in Berlin in 1946. A young American named Walter Keane was in Europe to learn how to be a painter. And there he was, staring heartbroken at the big-eyed children fighting over scraps of food in the rubbish. As he would later write: “As if goaded by a kind of frantic despair, I sketched these dirty, ragged little victims of the war with their bruised, lacerated minds and bodies, their matted hair and runny noses. Here my life as a painter began in earnest.”
To stare heartbroken = regarder fixement, le coeur gros
Fighting over scraps of food = se battre pour des restes de nourriture dans une poubelle
Goaded = stimulé
To sketch = faire un croquis
Dirty = sale
Ragged = en haillons
The war = la guerre
Bruised = avec des hématomes
Matted hair = cheveux emmêlés
Runny noses = le nez qui coule
In earnest = sérieusement, pour de bon

Fifteen years later and Keane was an art sensation. The American suburb had just been invented and millions of people suddenly had a lot of wall space to fill. Some of them – those who wanted their homes to express upbeat whimsy – opted for paintings of dogs playing pool or dogs playing poker. But a great number of others, who wanted something more melancholic, went for Walter’s sad, big-eyed children. Some of the children held sad, big-eyed poodles in their arms. Others sat lonely in fields of flowers. They were dressed as harlequins and ballerinas. They just seemed so innocent and searching.
A suburd = une banlieue
A lot of wall space to fill = des murs à couvrir/ décorer
Upbeat whimsy = un caprice, une fantaisie optimiste
To play pool = jouer au billard américain
Poodles = des caniches
Fields of flowers = des champs de fleurs

Walter himself was not a melancholic man. According to his biographers, Adam Parfrey and Cletus Nelson, he was a drinker and a lover – of women and of himself. This, for instance, is how he describes his first meeting with Margaret, the woman now sitting opposite me in Napa. It’s from his 1983 memoir, The World of Keane: “I love your paintings,” she told me. “You are the greatest artist I have ever seen. You are also the most handsome. The children in your paintings are so sad. It hurts my eyes to see them. Your perspective and the sadness you portray in the faces of the children make me want to touch them.” “No,” I said. “Never touch any of my paintings.”
A drinker = un buveur
The most handsome = le plus beau
Sad = triste

This conversation apparently took place at an outdoor art exhibition in San Francisco in 1955. Walter was still an unknown artist. He wouldn’t become a phenomenon for another few years. Later that night, his memoir continues, Margaret told him: “You are the greatest lover in the world.” They married. Margaret’s memory of their first meeting is quite different. The centre of Walter’s universe in the mid-1950s was a San Francisco beatnik club. While comedians such as Lenny Bruce and Bill Cosby performed onstage, out at the front, Walter sold his big-eyed-children paintings. One night Margaret decided to go to the club with him.
To take place = se dérouler
An exhibition = une exposition

“He had me sitting in a corner,” she tells me, “and he was over there, talking, selling paintings, when somebody walked over to me and said: ‘Do you paint too?’ And I suddenly thought – just horrible shock – ‘Is he taking credit for my paintings?’” He was. He had been telling his patrons a giant lie. Margaret was the painter of the big eyes – every one of them. Walter might well have seen sad children in postwar Berlin, but he hadn’t painted them, because he couldn’t paint to save his life.
He had me sitting in a corner = il m’a fait asseoir dans un coin
To sell = vendre
Is he taking credit for my paintings = est-ce qu’il s’attribue mes tableaux?
A lie = un mensonge

Margaret was furious. Back home she confronted him. She told him to stop. But something unexpected happened instead. During the decade that followed, Margaret would nod in respectful admiration as Walter told interviewers that he was the best painter of eyes since El Greco. She said nothing. Why did she go along with it? What was happening inside the Keane marriage? Margaret takes me back to the beginning. It’s true that he charmed her at that art exhibition in 1955, she says. “He was just oozing with charm. He could charm anyone.” But the rest of the conversation didn’t happen. How could it have?
Unexpected = inattendu
Instead = au lieu de ça
To nod = approuver, hocher la tête
To go along with = accompagner
Oozing with charm = le charme lui sortait par tous les pores

Their first two years were happy, but all that changed the night at the club. “Back home he tried to explain it away,” she says. “He said: ‘We need the money. People are more likely to buy a painting if they think they’re talking to the artist. People don’t want to think I can’t paint and need to have my wife paint. People already think I painted the big eyes and if I suddenly say it was you, it’ll be confusing and people will start suing us.’ He was telling me all these horrible problems.”
To need = avoir besoin
To be more likely to = être plus enclin à
My wife = ma femme
To sue = faire un procès

Walter offered Margaret a solution: “Teach me how to paint the big-eyed children.” So she tried. “And when he couldn’t do it, it was my fault. ‘You’re not teaching me right. I could do it if you had more patience.’ I was really trying, but it was just impossible.” Margaret felt trapped. She wanted to leave, but she didn’t know how. How would she support herself and her daughter? “So finally I went along with it,” she says. “And it was just tearing me apart.” By the early 1960s, Keane prints and postcards were selling in the millions. You couldn’t walk into a Woolworths without seeing racks of them. Luminaries including Natalie Wood, Joan Crawford, Dean Martin, Jerry Lewis and Kim Novak were buying the originals. “Did you see any of the money?” I ask Margaret.
To teach = enseigner, apprendre à
To try = essayer
To feel trapped = se sentir pris au piège
To support herself = se suffire financièrement
To tear apart = déchirer
Racks = des présentoirs
Luminaries = des lumières/ sommités

“No,” she says. “I just painted. But we moved to a nice house. There was a swimming pool. Servants. So I didn’t need to do anything except paint.” She smiles, ruefully. Outside in the sun, Walter was living the high life. “There was always three or four people swimming nude in the pool,” he wrote in his memoir. “Everybody was screwing everybody. Sometimes I’d be going to bed and there’d be three girls in the bed.” The Beach Boys would visit, and Maurice Chevalier, and Howard Keel. But Margaret rarely saw them, because she was painting 16 hours a day.
To move to = emménager
Ruefully = avec regret
To live the high life = avoir un train de vie
Nude = nu
To screw somebody = arnaquer, pigeonner, baiser quelqu’un

“Did the servants know what was going on?” “No, the door was always locked,” she says. “The curtains closed.” “You spent all those years with the curtains closed?” “When he wasn’t home he’d usually call every hour to make sure I hadn’t gone out,” she says. “I was in jail.” “Did you know about the affairs?” She shrugged. “I didn’t care what he did by then.” “It must have been lonely.”
Locked = fermé à clef
The curtains closed = les rideaux tirés
In jail = en prison
To shrug = hausser les épaules

“Yes, because he wouldn’t allow me to have any friends. If I tried to slip away from him, he’d follow me. We had a chihuahua and because I loved that little dog so much, he kicked it, and so finally I had to give the dog away. He was very jealous and domineering. And all along he said: ‘If you ever tell anyone I’m going to have you knocked off.’ I knew he knew a lot of mafia people. He really scared me. He tried to hit me once. But I said, ‘Where I come from men don’t hit women. If you ever do that again I’ll leave.’” She pauses. “But I let him do everything else, which was even worse probably.” “Would he come home from his partying and demand you show him what you’d painted?” I ask.
To allow = permettre
To slip away from = filer, s’esquiver
To kick = donner un coup de pied
To give the dog away = abandonner le chien
Domineering = dominateur, autoritaire
To knock off = faire tomber, liquider
To scare = faire peur
Even worse = bien pire encore

“He was always pressuring me to do more,” she says. “‘Do one with a clown costume.’ Or: ‘Do two children on a rocking horse.’ One day he had this idea that I’d do this huge painting, his masterwork, to hang in the United Nations or somewhere. I had a month to do that.” The “masterwork” was called Tomorrow Forever. It depicted a hundred sad-looking, big-eyed children of all creeds standing in a line that stretches to the horizon. The organisers of the 1964 World’s Fair hung it in their Pavilion of Education. Walter felt deeply proud of the achievement. He wrote in his memoir that his dead grandmother told him in a vision that “Michelangelo has put your name up for nomination as a member of our inner circle saying that your masterwork Tomorrow Forever will live in the hearts and minds of men as has his work on the Sistine chapel.”
Huge = gigantesque
A masterwork = une pièce maitresse, un chef d’oeuvre 
The world’s fair = une exposition internationale/ universelle
Proud of the achievement = fier de la réussite

If you’d asked Margaret back then about her inspiration – which you never would have, of course – she would have shrugged and said she didn’t know. The paintings just flowed out of her. But now, she says, she thinks she understands: “Those sad children were really my own deep feelings that I couldn’t express in any other way. Their eyes were searching. Asking why. Why is there so much sadness? Why do we have to get sick and die? Why do people shoot each other?” “Why is my husband so crazy?” I suggest. “Why did I get into this mess?” Margaret nods.
My own deep feelings = mes propres sentiments profonds
To get sick and die = tomber malade et mourir
To shoot at = tirer sur quelqu’un
Crazy = fou, cinglé

After 10 years of marriage, eight of them horrific, they divorced. Margaret promised Walter that she’d keep on secretly painting for him. And she did for a while. But after she’d delivered maybe 20 or 30 big eyes to him, she suddenly thought: “No more lies. From now on, I will only ever tell the truth.” Which is why, in October 1970, Margaret told a reporter from the UPI everything. “He wanted to learn to paint,” she revealed, “and I tried to teach him to paint when he was home, which wasn’t often. He couldn’t even learn to paint.” And so on. Walter went on the offensive, swearing that the big eyes were his and calling Margaret a “boozing, sex-starved psychopath” who he once discovered having sex with several parking-lot attendants. “He was really nuts,” Margaret says. “I couldn’t believe he had so much hate for me.”
To keep on = continuer à
To deliver = livrer
From now on = à partir de maintenant
To tell the truth = dire la vérité
To swear = jurer
Boozing = alcoolique
Sex-starved = sexuellement frustré
Parking-lot attendants = des employés de parking
Nuts = cinglé
Hate = haine

Margaret became a Jehovah’s Witness. She moved to Hawaii and started painting big-eyed children swimming in azure seas with tropical fish. In these Hawaii paintings you can see small, cautious smiles begin to form on the faces of the children. Walter’s life wasn’t so happy. He moved to a fisherman’s shack in La Jolla, California, and began to drink from morning until night. He told the few reporters still interested in him that Margaret was in league with the Jehovah’s Witnesses to defraud him. 
Cautious smiles = des sourires prudents
A fisherman’s shack = une cabane de pêcheur
To defraud = escroquer

Margaret sued Walter. The judge challenged them both to paint a child with big eyes, right there in court, in front of everyone. Margaret painted hers in 53 minutes. Walter said he couldn’t because he had a sore shoulder. “And there it is,” she tells me. She points to a framed portrait on the wall of a little girl with absolutely huge eyes, peering out nervously from behind a fence. “I painted it in Honolulu federal court. It has the exhibit number on the back.” In fact the walls of Margaret’s home are filled with big-eye paintings – children, poodles, kittens. There’s barely an inch of empty wall space.
A sore shoulder = une épaule douloureuse
To peer out = regarder d’un air interrogateur
A fence = une barrière/ clôture
Kittens = des chatons
Barely = à peine

“That painting is symbolic of her triumph over the lies,” Margaret’s son-in-law tells me as he walks past us towards the kitchen. Margaret won the court case, of course. She was awarded $4m, but she never saw a penny of it because Walter had drunk his fortune away. A court psychologist diagnosed him with a rare mental condition called delusional disorder. I ask Margaret if she knows anything about delusional disorder. She shakes her head and says she can’t even remember Walter being diagnosed with it. “It’s when a person who is otherwise completely normal has a particular delusion they’re absolutely convinced of,” I say. “Quite often it’s a jealous husband convinced his wife is cheating on him. Sometimes the person is convinced that some impostor is taking credit for their genius.”
Her son-in-law = son gendre
She won the court case = elle a gagné le procès
Delusional = délirant
To shake one’s head = secouer la tête
Otherwise = par ailleurs
To cheat on someone = tromper quelqu’un

“I didn’t know that,” Margaret says. “If you have the disorder it means you truly believe it,” I say. Margaret thinks. “For a long time I felt very guilty about it,” she says. “Why guilty?” I ask. “If I hadn’t allowed him to take credit for the paintings, he wouldn’t have got as sick as he got.” Walter died in 2000. He gave up drinking towards the end, but you get the sense that he missed those days, writing in his memoir that sobriety was his “new awakening, away from the drinking world of exciting sexy beautiful women, parties and art buyers”. By the 1970s, the big eyes had fallen from favour. Woody Allen mocked them in Sleeper, imagining a ridiculous future where they were revered.
Truly = véritablement
To believe = croire
To feel guilty = se sentir coupable
To give up = abandonner
Awakening = un réveil
To fall from favour = ne plus avoir la côte

But now, suddenly, there is a kind of renaissance. A Tim Burton biopic, Big Eyes, is about to be released, starring Amy Adams and Christoph Waltz. Margaret has a cameo: “I’m a little old lady sitting on a park bench.” “Was the film distressing to watch?” I ask her. “It was really traumatic,” she says. “I really think I was in shock for a couple of days. Christoph Waltz – he looks like Walter, sounds like him, acts like him. And to see Amy going through what I went through … It’s very accurate. Then it started to dawn on me how fantastic the movie is.” Margaret smiles, looking thrilled, and I realise that sometimes a wrong is so great it needs something as dramatic as a major biopic in which you’re the hero to heal the wounds.
To have a cameo = faire une brève apparition
Distressing = pénible
To look like = ressembler
Accurate = précis, fidèle
To dawn on = venir à l’esprit
Thrilled = ravi, aux anges
A wrong = une injustice, un tort
To heal the wounds = panser/ guérir les blessures

Jon Ronson
The Guardian, Sunday 26 October 2014

The big-eyed children: the extraordinary story of an epic art fraud

http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2014/oct/26/art-fraud-margaret-walter-keane-tim-burton-biopic

L'histoire pas ordinaire d'une artiste, dans les années 1960, aux Etats Unis, qui s'est fait voler ses oeuvres par son mari. Le film sort bientôt! Le texte est très long mais abordable!