COLUMNISTS 
There are some figures for whom a friendly, relaxed “Lunch with the FT” interview seems somehow inappropriate. I confess to having thought that Steve McQueen might be one of them. The Turner Prize-winning artist and filmmaker has just returned from New York, where his much-garlanded film Hunger has opened in the US. The film chronicles the final weeks in the life of Bobby Sands, the IRA hunger striker, and it is a harrowing piece of work, showing in precise, intimate detail just what it means to die slowly of starvation.
So I am waiting for McQueen, studying the menu, feeling mildly peckish and weirdly guilt-ridden, and hoping our conversation will not linger too much on the mechanics of bodily deterioration. He bounds in, a hefty man with a generous handshake, and we sit at a corner table of J Sheekey, the fashionable-yet-classic West End fish restaurant run by the owners of the Ivy. He has chosen it, he says, because he likes the lighting, it is intimate in scale, and the ceilings are not too high. He sounds like he is about to shoot a scene rather than have lunch.
As we chat briefly about the food, and order some wine, my fears about the lunch scenario are allayed. I ask him how Hunger was received in the US. “It’s done well, for such a small film. It was opening at the same time as Duplicity – the return of Julia Roberts!” The sarcastic edge is palpable. “It was Julia weekend. The only way a film like mine can survive is if it is received well, and, thankfully, it was.”
As it has been all over the world, winning prizes at Venice, Cannes, Sydney, Stockholm and Tallinn, as well as in Britain and Ireland. “It’s amazing,” says McQueen, “that this small film, which started in an abandoned sports centre in Belfast, should turn into this. It means that people who weren’t working are now working regularly. Michael Fassbender [the actor whose body became startlingly emaciated for his portrayal of Sands] is suddenly the buzz of the town, and starring in the next [Quentin] Tarantino movie. He did such a great job – all he needed was a chance.”
I tell him I thought the film was brilliant, but there were many times when I wanted to flee the cinema, and that I was left weak-kneed by its final, gruesome scenes. “That’s all you can ask for,” he responds, unfazed. “That’s the power of cinema.”
I ask McQueen why he had reopened a chapter in Britain’s history – the Northern Ireland troubles – that was seemingly closed. “It is never closed,” he admonishes. “You open history all the time. In one way or another. Look at all those costume dramas. You have to examine these things to find out who we are, where we come from.”
He talks in cascades of sharp, staccato sentences, which are frequently suspended while he searches for a better way of putting the point he has just made. “It was a very important case from our recent past,” he continues. “And then, for me, the film became this physical, magical thing, like a thermometer that was taking the temperature of what was going on at that time.”
They were febrile times of course, but McQueen’s approach is paradoxically cool, forensic, so concentrated on detail and nuance that the wider political issues are occasionally held at bay. He tells me about the nature of his research. “I was interested in what was happening between the words. I asked questions [of former prisoners]: when did you get used to the excrement on the walls? What was it like waking up with maggots all over your body?”
A waiter brings us king prawns and scallops. I hope he isn’t listening.
“What I wanted to project on the screen was the human element of the story, not the headlines from the newspapers,” McQueen continues. He quotes a scene from the film, in which a snowflake lands and melts on the scuffed knuckle of one of the prison warders. “We all know what that feels like. It’s a way into the character. By heightening your senses, it heightens your emotional understanding of him. It’s all about getting in.”
McQueen, who turns 40 this year, came to prominence when he won the Turner Prize in 1999 with a series of short films that were anything but explicitly political in tone. Bear chronicled a brief and mysterious encounter – erotic, aggressive? – between two naked men; Deadpan recreated the famous Buster Keaton sequence when a house collapsed all around the comedian, with McQueen taking Keaton’s place.
He was considered an experimental artist – he left New York’s Tisch School because “they wouldn’t let you throw the camera up in the air” – but not an overtly controversial one. All that changed with “Queen and Country”, McQueen’s tribute to the victims of the Iraq war, unveiled at the Manchester International Festival of 2007, for which he created a series of stamps carrying the individual portraits of all the British soldiers who had died in the war.
The creation of the stamp sheets, which were made to look as official as possible, was not the point of the art work. It was accompanied by a campaign for the Royal Mail to adopt the stamps, to allow the images, as McQueen puts it, to “enter the bloodstream of the country” via the opening of its morning post. The Royal Mail declined; the campaign continues.
I ask him how it is going, and he says he had a “good” meeting with the Prime Minister, who wrote back as promised within a week saying he would look into the case. “I’m still waiting,” he says, but not with impatience. “Since then we have had the economic crisis. But I got the impression there was interest there.
“The Royal Mail has not put anything in writing to us. Nothing will happen until the Prime Minister gets involved. But I am very hopeful.”
I ask him if the work may lose its bite if the stamps are adopted only after the British troop withdrawal from Iraq. “No, no, that was always the aim. The work is not anti-war, it’s not pro-war. Whatever your view is, you can support this. It’s not about right or wrong. It is about honouring the people – the Iraqi people as well – who have died.
“At the moment, you can only use a portrait on a stamp of a member of the Royal Family, or someone who has died. Who better than a person who has died for Queen and country? Instead of celebrities, like people from the Carry On films. I mean they are fantastic – hats off to Sid James and Barbara Windsor. But come on.”
The fish arrives: a lightly curried seafood confection for me, haddock for my guest. But it is the wrong type of haddock. There is an egg sitting on top of it, which McQueen stares at, prods forlornly, and finally pushes aside. It is not what he ordered. A waiter deals with the error swiftly and expertly. We order a second glass of wine each, although he says he never drinks during the day. “This is the only way to do an interview,” he declares. “Relaxed. You don’t feel like a batsman defending his wicket.”
The drinks interval is over, and we return to our weighty theme. McQueen conceived “Queen and Country”, which continues to tour the country, when he was appointed the National Portrait Gallery’s official war artist in 2003. He spent a week in Basra, but found it something of a “magical mystery tour”, returning home with no fixed ideas. “But what struck me was the camaraderie of the troops. It was very touching.”
It is the individuality of each soldier that he feels gets lost in coverage of the war. “I wanted to look at the smallest detail. People think they know this subject, but I wanted to give them another way of looking at it.” He returns to the theme of Hunger. “Did you know there is only 90 seconds of footage of the blanket protests [the five-year campaign by Irish republican prisoners to be treated as political prisoners]? Ninety seconds! That’s it. That’s why getting the imagery and the texture right was so important.”
This is the common purpose behind “Queen and Country” and Hunger: a scrupulous attention to the detail of contentious issues that are generally painted with the broadest and crudest of brush strokes. Little wonder that his forthcoming work at the Venice Biennale of contemporary art, where he is representing his country under the auspices of the British Council, is eagerly awaited by an international audience. The project is shrouded in secrecy, more zealously hidden from public attention than the winner of a forthcoming Nobel peace prize. So I ask him straight out: what is he up to?
He lets out a huge laugh. “You know I can’t talk about that.”
But it must feel a bit weird, all this business of national pavilions? Doesn’t it feel like a cross between a trade show and the Eurovision Song Contest?
“In a strange way, it serves its purpose. I am not a nationalist, but I come from Britain and I grew up in Britain. It is an honour that I appreciate very much. If someone wants to give me a space in Venice, I’ll take it.” Does he feel extra pressure, like a footballer winning a first cap? “No,” he says quickly. “I won’t be polishing my shoes and wearing a tie. I am just getting on with it. Let’s see what happens.”
We take a brief detour on the state of London football, and it turns out that we were both born and bred, and indeed saw our first game, in Shepherd’s Bush. McQueen was brought up on the less-than-salubrious White City Estate, which he left at the age of four, to live in Ealing. “It was fantastic – the suburbs! Middle-class living!” Today he divides his time between London and Amsterdam, a city he admires for its “human scale”.
Does he now consider himself an artist or a filmmaker? He shrugs. “An artist filmmaker. End of story. I don’t really care.”
He gives the impression that he is still not quite used to the acclaim that has greeted Hunger. “I was in LA, doing the studios. People wanted to see me. Driving into the parking lot, I thought, this is so surreal. I was expecting elephants and showgirls to come out any minute. It was interesting.”
Did he hear a lot of bullshit? “Yes, but there are a lot of very intelligent people there. Their problem is that all they talk about is film. That is their only reference, other movies. That kills ideas. They can kill an idea in a second. You know, everyone sees this big Hollywood sign, but not all the graffiti behind it or the structures that hold it up.” It is unclear whether he actually went delving behind the letters, or this was a metaphorical observation, or both. We down our espressos, and it is time to leave. He has a busy afternoon.
A man who helps McQueen with his coat quietly offers his congratulations, and asks if he has visited the Ivy Club, at the sister restaurant down the road. “No I don’t do clubs,” says McQueen with gusto. “I’m a socialist worker! I am a member of No Club!”
The 2009 Venice Biennale runs June 7 to November 22; The Venice Biennale
Peter Aspden: Pop’s ring cycle
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J Sheekey
28-34 St Martin’s Court, London WC2N 4AL
Sparkling water £3.75
Sauvignon Blanc x 4 glasses £23.00
Tiger prawns £14.50
Squid £9.50
Monkfish curry £22.25
Fried haddock £17.25
Small espresso £2.50
Large espresso £3.00
Total (including service) £107.72
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A brief history of Brits at the biennale by Jackie Wullschlager
Inaugurated in 1895, the Venice Biennale remains the world’s greatest international art show. It features individual or group exhibitions in national pavilions . The pavilions’ varying positions and styles reflect the world order between 1895 and 1914, with the British pavilion still boasting a reputation for the best hospitality. Over the past century, many of British art’s controversies and dramas have played out in Venice.
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| Henry Moore’s 1948 biennale show was a success |
1909: Britain acquires its own pavilion, a neo-classical former tea-room, for £3,000.
1912: Britain’s largest group exhibition includes German-born Walter Sickert, Scottish colourist John Duncan Fergusson and Polish émigré Alfred Wolmark.
1920: Britain refuses to participate because works from the last one have not yet returned home.
1928: With no government funding, art dealer Joseph Duveen pays for the pavilion, showing favourites including William Orpen and Augustus John.
1934: Hitler visits the British Pavilion, which shows Ben Nicholson’s abstract white reliefs.
1938: The British Council takes over the running of the pavilion. Paul Nash, Stanley Spencer and Jacob Epstein are shown.
1942: The British pavilion is occupied by the Italian army.
1948: Henry Moore represents Britain in the first postwar biennale. The exhibition is a triumph.
1954: The pavilion is controversially divided between Ben Nicholson and avant-garde artists Francis Bacon and Lucian Freud, who dominate.
1956: Lynn Chadwick wins the International Sculpture Prize.
1964: Roger Hilton wins the Unesco Prize but is overshadowed by Robert Rauschenberg of the US, who wins Venice’s major award, the Lion d’Or.
1968: Bridget Riley wins the International Painting Prize.
1970: Richard Smith represents Britain with a sculpture show. Sculpture, photography, installation art take precedence over painting for the next decade.
1984: Howard Hodgkin marks painting’s return to the British pavilion. Not for 20 years, Robert Hughes writes in Time, “has a show by a single painter ... looked so effortlessly superior to everything else on view by living artists”.
1990: Anish Kapoor wins the Young Artist prize.
1993: Richard Hamilton shares the Lion d’Or with Antoni Tàpies.
1997: Rachel Whiteread opens a run of Young British Artists, followed by Gary Hume (1999), Mark Wallinger (2001), Chris Ofili (2003) and Tracey Emin (2007).
Jackie Wullschlager is the FT’s art critic. Rodin at Musée d’Orsay
