Gary James McQueen

GARY JAMES MCQUEEN (1979)
Vanitas Skull, 2018
Three-dimensional lenticular work. One-of-a-kind piece
Provenance: McQueen, 2018 documentary; private collection, Qatar.
Measurements: 122 x 152 cm.

“My artwork has to have some form of emotion or a soul attached to it. I am a very theatrical person, and so this is something very important to me and also to the life of the brand,” says the artist himself.

Gary James McQueen is a British artist and designer known for his unique fusion of digital art, photography, graphic design, and lenticular images. The nephew of Lee Alexander McQueen, he worked alongside the celebrated designer beginning in 2005, developing prints and graphics for his collections and helping to shape his unmistakable visual universe. Following Alexander McQueen’s death in 2010, he pursued an independent artistic career marked by visually striking images—particularly skulls, flowers, butterflies, birds, and fantastical creatures—through which he explores the duality between beauty and death, nature and artifice. Among the best-known milestones of his career is his involvement with “Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty,” the landmark exhibition presented at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and later at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, as well as his celebrated three-dimensional lenticular compositions, which have made the skull and the aesthetic of contemporary vanitas some of the most recognizable hallmarks of his work.