David Bowie is all around us
David Bowie est tout autour de nous.
David Bowie’s contributions to music and performance are milestones of our era. Whether performing glam rock, funk, soul, disco or dance music, he has made each genre his own. He has always been fascinated by the avant-garde and from Major Tom to Ziggy Stardust, Aladdin Sane to Halloween Jack, he has reinvented and metamorphosed, putting his body on show as an actual performance, always one step ahead of the curve. In London, New York, via Berlin and Paris: shaking up the old world and resisting constraints, his musical geography has anticipated and traversed the artistic evolutions of our recent history.
This is the rich and fascinating journey that the exhibition charts.
Design by Kansai Yamamoto.
Photograph by Masayoshi Sukita
© Sukita / The David Bowie Archive
David Bowie is a face in the crowd
David Bowie est un visage dans la foule
Growing up
By his teens, David Bowie is fascinated by pop-music, American culture and style. He starts playing in local bands but after leaving school at 16 in 1963, he goes to work in a Mayfair advertising agency. He leaves after a year to be a professional musician.
The Beatles, the Rolling Stones and a wave of other bands are revolutionising the UK’s popular music industry. From 1963 to 1969 David plays, writes songs, records, learns to act and becomes « David Bowie », but fails to make a significant commercial breakthrough.
Photograph by Roy Ainsworth
Courtesy of The David Bowie Archive
Image © Victoria and Albert Museum
David Bowie is floating in a most peculiar way
David Bowie plane d’une façon particulièrement étrange
Breakthrough
January 1969: newspapers print the first colour photographs of the Earth from space. Bowie writes, ‘Planet Earth is blue / And there’s nothing I can do’, a new song about an astronaut alone in space. He calls it ‘Space Oddity’ – a pun on Stanley Kubrick’s 1968 film 2001: A Space Odyssey.
The single is released in July, shortly before the launch of the Apollo 11 moon mission. On 20 July, the BBC plays it over footage of the moon landing, ‘Ground Control to Major Tom / Your circuit’s dead / There’s something wrong’. A strange choice? But what a song. ‘Space Oddity’ goes to No.5 in the UK charts by October. ‘Bowie’ is, at last, breaking through.
Photograph by William Anders
© Nasa
David Bowie is thinking about a world to come
David Bowie songe à un monde à venir
Astronaut of inner space
Beaming into homes through television sets across Britain, blowing the minds of teenagers and their parents, red-booted, red-haired, red-blooded, jumpsuit-clad Bowie sings ‘Starman’ on Top of the Pops. No one has ever seen anything like it before. Is he a boy or a girl? Is he from Earth or Outer Space?
Courtesy of The David Bowie Archive
Image © Victoria and Albert Museum
David Bowie is using machine age knife magic
David Bowie est un adepte du cut-up
Creative influences
Bowie’s energy in seeking out new ideas, and his skill in filtering them to find exactly what he needs, is a major contributor to his success. Unlike many stars, he never bows to the expectations of the record company or sticks to a winning formula. For Bowie, that’s the moment to move on to something else.
Bowie was fascinated by the dystopian story of an underclass controlled by the state in George Orwell’s novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. In 1973, he tried to get permission to make a musical of the story. He was denied the rights, and instead developed his own tale of violent youths (the ‘Diamond Dogs’) roaming a post-apocalyptic ‘Hunger City’. The resulting stage show was spectacular and a breakthrough in rock theatre.
Designed by Jules Fisher and Mark Ravitz
Courtesy of The David Bowie Archive
Image © Victoria and Albert Museum
David Bowie is never at a loss for words or poses
David Bowie n’est jamais à court de mots ou de poses
Song creation
Songwriting for Bowie is part of a creative process that integrates words, music, production and imagery. In the ’70s, he becomes fascinated by chance as a catalyst for creativity. Alongside conventional songwriting methods, he uses ‘cut-up’ techniques and, in the ’90s, a random word generator.
‘I like the idea that [the lyrics are] vehicles for other people to interpret or use as they will’
Bowie developed his own form of the cut-up technique in the ’70s describing it as ‘a tool of writing to promote a new perspective’.
Courtesy of The David Bowie Archive
Image © Victoria and Albert Museum
David Bowie is taking advantage of what the moment offers
David Bowie tire profit de ce que le moment a à offrir
Collaboration
Bowie personally controls his body of work, from his music and album covers, costumes and stage sets, through to the merchandise on sale on his tours. To realise his vision, he works with choreographers, artists, photographers, designers, fashion designers, set and lighting designers, as well as musicians and producers. He actively seeks out collaborators, mainstream or avant-garde, famous or unknown, and shows a particular talent in finding the right voice to express what he wants to say. What doesn’t work, he leaves out.
In choosing collaborators who share his creative vision, Bowie rarely puts a foot wrong.
Photograph by Frank W Ockenfels 3
© Frank W Ockenfels 3
David Bowie is making himself up
David Bowie se maquille
Characters
In 1967, aged 20, Bowie discovers the stage and the possibilities of delivering his ideas through the creation of extraordinary characters. He creates and he borrows – Major Tom, Ziggy Stardust, Aladdin Sane, Halloween Jack, the Thin White Duke, detective Nathan Adler, the Minotaur.
Photograph by Brian Duffy
Photo Duffy © Duffy Archive & The David Bowie Archive.
David Bowie is a picture of the future
David Bowie est une image du futur
Music Videos
Musicians start making promotional films long before the ‘video age’ begins with the launch of MTV in 1981. In the ’60s, The Beatles and the Stones are among the first to make them an extension of their art, not just a marketing device. Bowie’s first successful, still astounding, film ‘Life on Mars?’ is released in 1973: Ziggy appears against a white studio like a turquoise vision of the future.
has to be three dimensional… I’m not content just writing songs ”
« Il faut que ce soit tridimensionnel… Écrire des chansons ne suffit pas »
© Avrotros, 2015
David Bowie is wearing many masks
David Bowie porte de nombreux masques
Stage and screen
In Bowie’s lifetime, the actor, as an idol of popular adulation, is replaced by the pop star. Bowie is a part of that change: between 1967 and ’68 he trains with actor and mime artist Lindsay Kemp and auditions for films and shows.
He plays a characteristically eclectic cast of characters, Andy Warhol, Pontius Pilate, the Goblin King, often preferring the cutting edge over the mainstream…
In The Man Who Fells To Earth, Bowie plays the character of Thomas Jerome Newton, an alien who comes to Earth in search of water for his dying planet.
Bowie’s artwork gives a surreal twist to these film stills, originally taken by David James. The bath is ‘paved in’ and two images have been combined to create a disjunction between Bowie’s head and his reflection.
Film stills by David James
Courtesy of The David Bowie Archive
Film stills © STUDIOCANAL Films Ltd.
Image © Victoria and Albert Museum
David Bowie is where we are now
David Bowie est où nous sommes maintenant
David Bowie is a musician, a performer, a radical, an artist and an inspiration. He channels avant-garde influences into music and performances with mass appeal, and has an uncanny ability to anticipate and define the direction of popular culture. He understands his audience, but by taking bold and unpredictable steps, he guards his artistic integrity. For thousands, he is a conduit for new ideas and a visionary icon.
Photograph by Masayoshi Sukita
© Sukita
David Bowie is a musician, a performer, a radical, an artist and an inspiration. He channels avant-garde influences into music and performances with mass appeal, and has an uncanny ability to anticipate and define the direction of popular culture. He understands his audience, but by taking bold and unpredictable steps, he guards his artistic integrity. For thousands, he is a conduit for new ideas and a visionary icon.
Photograph by Masayoshi Sukita
© Sukita