James McQueen
Takes historical portraiture and vintage advertising and paints them back at you, altered.
James McQueen is a British contemporary painter who trained at Kingston and works from a studio in the south of England. The paintings appropriate the imagery of an older visual culture — society portraiture, tobacco and drinks advertising, cigarette packaging, mid-century magazine illustration — and rework it at large scale in oil and mixed media, frequently overlaying text, brand marks or erasure so that the source is recognisable and simultaneously undermined. The subject is broadly the same throughout: how status, glamour and consumption were once sold, and how thoroughly the selling still works.
A comparatively young market, principally British, with the unique large paintings on canvas leading it and a print output of screenprints and giclees in editions beneath. Hand-finished editions exist, and distinguishing an embellished print from a unique painting rests on the certificate and the studio documentation rather than on the appearance of the surface. Because the works layer oil, spray and printed elements, the surfaces age unevenly and any past varnishing is a real problem. Provenance to the original gallery is the usual reference point.
If you own a work by James McQueen
Send photographs and whatever paperwork came with it. The first question is what the work actually is — edition or unique, when, and in what condition — because everything else follows from the answer. A valuation costs nothing and commits you to nothing.
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