“There are people whose ideas are so strong that they seem to glow with creativity. McQueen is one of them.” —Telegraph (UK)
The director of Shame, Hunger, and 12 Years a Slave—films known for boundary-pushing performances and true-life subject matter—discusses his work spanning the worlds of art and cinema with Stuart Comer, the new chief curator of media and performance art at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. Hailed in a 2010 New York Times headline as an “Intense Seeker of Powerful Elegance,” Steve McQueen has become known for his formalism and his willingness to engage with controversial content in powerfully human ways. This dialogue marks McQueen’s first visit to the Walker Cinema.
About the Artist
One of Britain’s most influential contemporary artists, Steve McQueen began his career with an intense interest in painting, inspired by the works of Edward Burra, Willem de Kooning, and Jean-Michel Basquiat. During a year at the Tisch School of the Arts in New York, McQueen further experimented with the moving image and garnered international attention for his thesis film Bear in 1993.
Since winning the prestigious Turner Prize in 1999, he has successfully navigated the crossover from short works to feature filmmaking and his work has been shown extensively around the world. He was awarded Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) and participated in Documenta 11 in 2002. He won the Caméra d’Or award for first-time filmmakers at the 2008 Cannes Film Festival for Hunger, which was part of the Walker’s First Look series in 2009. That year his 16mm film installation Running Thunder was included in the Walker exhibition The Quick and the Dead. The artist was selected to represent Britain at the 2009 Venice Biennale, and was most recently featured in a comprehensive survey at the Art Institute of Chicago and the Schaulager in Basel.
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