In commemoration of the great legend Bowie that died at the age of 69, enjoy the musical delight of his 1969 hit classic ‘Space Oddity’.
In the wake of the loss of a true cultural prodigy, it is time to reminisce over the lifetime of a man that became the chronicle of an icon.
A universe curated by the V&A’s Theatre and Performance guardians, Victoria Broackes and Geoffrey Marsh, David Bowie is, is the first international retrospective of the extraordinary career of David Bowie – one of the most pioneering and influential persons, let alone performers of modern times.
Having been granted unprecedented access to the David Bowie Archive, the V&A unveiled the amalgamation of 300 objects, unified under one roof for the very first time. They include rare performance material such as original costumes including Ziggy Stardust bodysuits (1972) designed by Freddie Burretti, photography by Brian Duffy, his variety of fashion, photography, film, music videos, set designs, album artwork, alongside personal items from Bowie’s own instruments, to handwritten set lists and lyrics as well as some of Bowie’s own sketches, musical scores, and never-before-seen storyboards and diary entries. This exhibition truly displays the organic evolution of Bowie’s imagination.
David Bowie is, explores, through multi-media design of Sennheiser’s sound and Gucci’s vision, introduced theatrical scene-setting, original animations and video installations to create an immersive journey through his formative artistic influences, revealing the creative processes of Bowie as a musical innovator and cultural icon, tracing his shifting style and sustained reinvention across five decades.
David Bowie is a true genius. I’m glad to have lived during his lifetime. His creative expression has always transcended this world, and now, expressionless in this dimension where ‘at the centre of it all [is] your eyes’, he will forever exist in an intangible state of being: as a sound wave reverberating across our world, like the light of his Blackstar. Bowie is, always remaining; in the timeless memory of Museums and archives, and in the legendary role he played in this modern chapter in the saga of art history.
David Bowie is demonstrates how Bowie’s work has both influenced and been influenced by wider movements in art, design, theatre and contemporary culture. The exhibition take a magnifying glass to his creative processes, shifting style and the broad range of Bowie’s collaborations with masters of the fields of fashion, sound, graphics, theatre, art and film, to witness the animation of his artistic progression. It is the relief of Bowie’s creative enigma in tangible reality.
His memory is now cast upon the walls of the Groninger Museum in the Northern Netherlands: Andreas Blühm, director of the Groninger Museum said this about hosting Bowie’s final tour, “We are very happy and proud to have this exhibition in the Netherlands and to share the experience with our visitors. It is an imagination-boosting exhibition, not only for David Bowie fans, but for a broad public. On top of that the interface between fashion, design and contemporary art links up perfectly with the Groninger Museum”.
Around 300,000 people have already seen the David Bowie is exhibition at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London. A host of notable figures have visited the exhibition including Debbie Harry, Dame Vivienne Westwood, Robert Redford, Anna Wintour en Kate Moss, all both friends and admirers of the renegade oddity.
There is nobody that sounds quite like him, he is a maverick of music, he had artistic vision that crossed over all musical genre boundaries, creating a Psychedelic pop-rock style and forged something Bowie-esque, his signature hit wonders. His obscurely beautiful music expanded a whole generation of minds and taught us to celebrate our idiosyncrasies of thought. With his pioneering imagination he broke the mould and undermined all stereotypes through his lyricism, music style, and image. Tim Burton once said: “It’s important as an artist to look at the world in a unique way. Be comfortable with yourself – and resist the pressure to conform to stereotypes or what’s expected. Tap into whatever strange beauty you see in your subject that you want to share with others.”
With consistent references to esoteric symbolism about his own virtual reality, radically interpreting himself as a ‘Starman’, born out of stardust, I think, and many people think he probably is an alien prophet from another dimension. He is simply beyond this world. An innovator galvanising a strong contrast to normal, what he achieved was a space utopia: a universal metaphor that elucidates a romanticism of his cosmopolitan nature. His diverse identities are punctuated by his epicene image, his fluidity of altering characters and plasticity of sexuality. Bowie transcended beauty ideals with his androgynous form and elegant and, at times, purposefully effeminately beautiful features. Bowie was not just one person. You cannot remember him by just one face. Tilda Swinton the guest speaker at the London exhibition, a self-acclaimed “freak who even looked a little like [him]” said that there is “Nothing more certain than changes” like the song within ourselves changes throughout our lives meanders and alters.
Bowie is the most powerful progressive to walk this earth. He created his own era, the age of alternative, as he clarifies in his swan song, he is ‘not a rock star, not a movie star’ but a Black Star, the humble hero, an eccentric who made misfits familiar and made being out-of-the-box flattering. “The freak becomes the great unifier; the alien is the best rare and out-there company, for so many more than the few… [Bowie is] every alien’s favourite cousin.”
A vast international tour reaching all corners of the world, David Bowie is took off in the London V&A HQ between 23 March 2013 – 11 August 2013; landed at Toronto’s Art Gallery Ontario from 25 September 2013 – 19 November 2013; soared over the equator to Museu da Imagem e do Som, Sao Paulo, Brasil, from 31 January 2014– 20 April 2014; dropped in on Europe’s midriff at Martin-Gropius-Bau, Berlin, from 20 May 2014 – 24 August, 2014; hovered across the pond to Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, USA from 23 September 2014 – 4 January 2015; flew to the Art capital of Paris in Philharmonie de Paris/ Cité de la Musique, from 2 March 2015 to 31 May 2015; touched down down under at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI), Melbourne, from 16 July 2015 to 1 November 2015, and now, here it resides, in Dutch company at the Groninger Museum, Groningen, The Netherlands from 11 December 2015 – 10th April 2016, and the next stop will be Japan (Japanese venue confirmed for Spring 2017).
So, go and see Bowie at the Dutch or Japanese Venue for his final world tour and let him share with you his last hurrah.
After 28 albums and of shifting genres and identities, one thing has remained constant: his air of mysticism and genius, the “moonage daydreamer”, with that trademark piercing all-seeing eye. David Jones has proven to be a true original, a mortal marvel casting “immortal shapes… as he has for – isn’t it? – Centuries now. Bowie is an eternal spectre, an infinite shadow thrown in his wake, the achromatic black that fills the world in the absence of light, he is the unlimited potential of vacuous space, he is the unforeseeable, the unexpected, the astonishing: he is the swell of inspiration out of nothingness. Bowie is floating on the cosmic tide, ‘in the most peculiar way’. David Bowie is ubiquitous.
David Bowie is a Blackstar.
David Bowie is, and will always be.
David Bowie is Forever.
