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Introduction: Why Steve McQueen Matters

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ReFocus: The Films of Steve McQueen
This chapter is in the book ReFocus: The Films of Steve McQueen
i n t r o d u c t i o nWhy Steve McQueen MattersThomas Austin In 2013 the companion publication to a major exhibition spanning twenty years of works by Steve McQueen at Schaulager, Switzerland, quoted him: ‘The eye is the only part of the body that is all about the inside as such. Like an open wound’ (Stäheli 2013: 133). One of the pieces in that show, Charlotte (2004), is a silent, looped 16 mm film of just under 6 minutes. Shot in red and black, the eye of actress Charlotte Rampling is framed in extreme close-up. Slowly, from screen right, McQueen’s finger approaches the eye, until it finally touches, pokes and prods it, and the eye blinks repeatedly in response. (See Figure 0.1.) The following summary captures how the vulnerability of Rampling’s eye generates acute discomfort for viewers: ‘The cropped image keeps going in and out of focus. In analogy to the camera eye, the lens of the actress’s eye must continually adjust to the approaching finger. [. . .] Viewers cannot help sharing the almost unbearable sense of vulnerability that wavers between excitement and menace’ (‘Charlotte2013: 170). In her influential study of the horror film genre, Carol Clover wrote: ‘Horror privileges eyes because, more crucially than any other kind of cinema, it is about eyes. More particularly, it is about eyes watching horror [. . .] we take it in the eye’ (Clover 1992: 167, 202). With its threatening red hues, McQueen’s Charlotte certainly invokes the horror genre, and perhaps pornography too, while the eye in peril recalls an iconic sequence from Buñuel’s Un Chien Andalou (1929). But Charlotte also reminds us that all visual art enters viewers’ consciousness via the eye, and that this constitutes both an opportunity and a responsibility for the artist. Relatedly, visual art carries another potential threat, that of truth-telling. The late Jean Fisher wrote: ‘If one accepts that art, rather than existing in some detached aesthetic realm, is part of life, then its efficacy lies in its capacity to disclose the unacknowledged forces that govern our reality’ (2013: 74). Such understandings have shaped McQueen’s career, and his mainstream output as much as his gallery work. 8270_Austin.indd 103/08/23 12:26 PM
© 2023, Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh

i n t r o d u c t i o nWhy Steve McQueen MattersThomas Austin In 2013 the companion publication to a major exhibition spanning twenty years of works by Steve McQueen at Schaulager, Switzerland, quoted him: ‘The eye is the only part of the body that is all about the inside as such. Like an open wound’ (Stäheli 2013: 133). One of the pieces in that show, Charlotte (2004), is a silent, looped 16 mm film of just under 6 minutes. Shot in red and black, the eye of actress Charlotte Rampling is framed in extreme close-up. Slowly, from screen right, McQueen’s finger approaches the eye, until it finally touches, pokes and prods it, and the eye blinks repeatedly in response. (See Figure 0.1.) The following summary captures how the vulnerability of Rampling’s eye generates acute discomfort for viewers: ‘The cropped image keeps going in and out of focus. In analogy to the camera eye, the lens of the actress’s eye must continually adjust to the approaching finger. [. . .] Viewers cannot help sharing the almost unbearable sense of vulnerability that wavers between excitement and menace’ (‘Charlotte2013: 170). In her influential study of the horror film genre, Carol Clover wrote: ‘Horror privileges eyes because, more crucially than any other kind of cinema, it is about eyes. More particularly, it is about eyes watching horror [. . .] we take it in the eye’ (Clover 1992: 167, 202). With its threatening red hues, McQueen’s Charlotte certainly invokes the horror genre, and perhaps pornography too, while the eye in peril recalls an iconic sequence from Buñuel’s Un Chien Andalou (1929). But Charlotte also reminds us that all visual art enters viewers’ consciousness via the eye, and that this constitutes both an opportunity and a responsibility for the artist. Relatedly, visual art carries another potential threat, that of truth-telling. The late Jean Fisher wrote: ‘If one accepts that art, rather than existing in some detached aesthetic realm, is part of life, then its efficacy lies in its capacity to disclose the unacknowledged forces that govern our reality’ (2013: 74). Such understandings have shaped McQueen’s career, and his mainstream output as much as his gallery work. 8270_Austin.indd 103/08/23 12:26 PM
© 2023, Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh
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