There’s a fence in the art world, and perched on it and either side of it are folks with differing and unsure opinions about the art of Steve Keene. Why? Is he the latest chic artist to cover a sacred Christian symbol in his excrement? No. Has he strung up a peck of chickens
and encased them in glass to let them rot? Not quite. Did he sneeze colored paint on a canvas and slap a $250,000 price tag on it? Not yet.

No, Keene’s crime is being that of a populist (in the traditional, non-Al Goreian sense of the word) artist. He methodically paints the same thing countless times, matching stroke for stroke on canvas after canvas to create nearly-identical pieces at a rate that would make Henry Clay Ford proud.

He’s driven by the process, not necessarily the result. Hence, critics think he’s flippant, or worse, a scourge, a figure corrupting the art world with his unserious, assembly-line approach. What they really despise is the price tag (Keene sells his paintings for between $1 - $20 apiece – hardly gallery prices). If a work of art is supposed to comment on the human condition, then Keene’s entire process is a work of art in progress, that of the working man, toiling away, repetitiously, day after day.