Steve Keene

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Steve Keene (born 1957 in Washington, DC ) is an American painter . He lives in Brooklyn , New York City .

biography

Keene studied at Yale University and Virginia Commonwealth University .

Since 1992 he has also been painting his pictures in public, often in art museums and galleries in the United States and around the world, for example in 1999 at the Museum Ludwig in Cologne .

plant

“I work from eight in the morning to eight in the evening, I'm like a pizza maker who bakes one pizza after the other. I paint between 60 and 96 pictures a day. The more the better!"

- Steve Keene

Keene usually paints several wooden panels at the same time with the same motif. This enables him to produce several dozen paintings a day. There are several variants of every Keen painting, which differ from each other only because of the analogous way they work. Each picture is unique. Initially it was a project against the established art scene, with increasing success it became his life's work. Keene has painted over 250,000 paintings, making him one of the most "productive" painters ever. Some critics compare Keene to Andy Warhol .

The motifs are often borrowed from everyday life or often contain American symbols such as the flag of the USA , well-known record covers or portraits of Abraham Lincoln . Stylistically, his paintings range between expressionism , pop art , graffiti art and naive painting .

Keen sells the pictures, which are painted exclusively in acrylic on wooden panels, for a few dollars a piece. There are also no exceptions for well-known art collectors such as Dennis Hopper, Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein or Guggenheim director Thomas Krens.

reception

Steve Keene benefited from his good relationships with greats in independent music , such as the band Pavement , for which he took over the cover design of the album Wowee Zowee . Members of Pavement and other bands such as Soul Coughing , Dave Matthews Band , Silver Jews / David Berman or Merzbow are avowed supporters and fans of Keene.

In 2004 Andreas Geiger and Thomas Schlottmann shot the documentary Fresh Art Daily about Keene.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Article on Deutschlandradio Kultur
  2. ↑ http://www.deutschlandradiokultur.de/malen-wie-am-fliessband.999.de.html?dram:article_id=155682
  3. ↑ Fresh Art Daily in the Berlinale film archive (PDF file; 131 kB)

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Keene, Steve
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American painter
DATE OF BIRTH 1957
PLACE OF BIRTH Washington, DC