Steve McQueen artworks acquired by Amsterdam museum
Rolling Thunder was made in 2007, one year before McQueen released his first feature Hunger
A museum in Amsterdam has acquired two artworks by Steve McQueen, the Turner Prize-winning artist turned film-maker.
The two pieces - a lightbox containing a photo of a boy on a
beach and an 11-minute film of a dead horse lying in a meadow - will go
on display at the Stedelijk Museum from 13 December.The Dutch museum was one of the first in the world to focus on video art.
McQueen's latest film, 12 Years a Slave, was named best picture on Sunday at this year's Academy Awards.
The 44-year-old won the prestigious Turner Prize in 1999, partly for a film in which he recreated a Buster Keaton stunt involving a falling house wall.
Fame in the art world has the same affect as fame in the rest of society: it raises the value of an individual's stock. Which, when it comes to an artist, is art.
When Steve McQueen won the Turner Prize the value of his work will almost certainly have risen. To be the first artist in history to also win an Oscar - working in the same genre (film) - will inevitably further increase his prices.
His newly acquired international celebrity status is also highly valued by museums, who are desperate to attract a large, broad audience. The popular appeal of being able to own and show a film by a famous movie director is likely to tick several institutional boxes.
The first piece acquired by the
Stedelijk is titled Mees, After Evening Dip, New Year's Day, 2002 and
depicts a trembling boy on a beach with a towel clasped around him.
According to the museum, "the still image of the shivering
Mees attains the status of a film projection, with the suggestion of
movement and the passage of time".The other piece, Rolling Thunder, is a 16mm colour film without sound in which the horse's lifelessness is signalled by a circling fly settling on its eyeball.
The museum calls its title "misleading, evoking associations with horse races, speed and (horse)power" while highlighting the "unanticipated tension" the static image provokes.
The Stedelijk already owns 7th Nov, a 2001 short in which McQueen's cousin Marcus tells of a fatal accident that changed his life forever.
In addition to winning the best picture Oscar, 12 Years a Slave received the best adapted screenplay prize and a best supporting actress award for cast member Lupita Nyong'o.
McQueen previously directed Hunger, about IRA hunger striker Bobby Sands, and Shame, a drama about a sex addict in which Michael Fassbender also played the lead role.