AGO exhibit ,"David Bowie Is" © Linda Dawn Hammond / IndyFoto.com 2013
In the first room of the "David Bowie Is" exhibit, personal momentos are displayed from Bowie's youth, which was briefly spent in Brixton, a tough, working class section of London, England, where he was born in 1947. We discover that his parents purchased a Victorian house there for the enviably low sum of 500 pounds! They soon moved on to the middle class suburbs of Bromley, Kent, a pretty, semi-rural bedroom community of London which a decade later would nurture many of the greats in the British punk scene. (We too lived there, but my family left for Canada in '63, before Bromley could fully exact its perplexingly subversive influence on my psyche.)
One politely shuffles along the walls in the dark with a myriad other visitors, looking at displays which include souvenirs and texts relating to Bowie's early bands and precocious artistic efforts to promote them. Occasionally we are enticed to peer into peepholes, which are frankly incomprehensible as one anticipates something naughty only to be left vaguely disappointed. And throughout, being always distracted by a noisy, brilliant installation on the opposing wall. Four video projectors aimed at a screen from different angles create the remarkable illusion of a three dimensional stage, upon which various chapters of Bowie's early life and interviews intertwine with vignettes of the social and political time in which he lived. Solid objects break up the video images and enhance the illusion that one could step into the physical space they appear to create. I could have spent hours just watching this, and actually returned after seeing the entire exhibit in order to view it again. At stage right leans an actual acoustic guitar from the Space Oddity era. At stage left, hanging upon the wall is a green jacket which Bowie adorned with hand painted pinstripes, presumably because he either couldn't afford a costly original or, more likely, preferring as always to tease us with an illusion.
What I particularly liked in one of these scenes was the Penguin book Bowie always carried tucked in his pocket, its title intentionally visible. Ever seeking an audience, it existed to demonstrate to strangers on the train that here was a young man who possessed intellectual depth. This device may have started out as a mere prop, but eventually Bowie was inspired to actually read them, thus developing his mind and imagination. I found this touching as I recall doing something similar as a teen! In subsequent rooms the theme of influential books and authors is returned to. Of interest are documents of an interview with William Burroughs, in which Bowie suggests that love interferes with the creative process, and Burroughs concurs. One could spend hours in each room, just reading transcripts and experiencing the thrill of seeing beloved lyrics in their hand written originals, complete with scribbled out sections and re-writes.
A headset is provided which only turns on when triggered by proximity to a particular exhibit, where appropriate music and commentary is provided. For committed Bowie fans, this offers a remarkable auditory accompaniment to a visual trip down memory lane, as defined by Bowie's influence on us. If one removed the headphones and observed other people in the crowd, several were singing along quite loudly to the music, completely oblivious. A staid AGO member who was not an avid fan was perplexed, uncertain that what she was viewing was actually art and should be exhibited in a proper gallery. I expect the inclusion of an Andy Warhol et al. section (representing Bowie's mentors or influences) was there to appease people with similarly restricted definitions of art as something hanging on a wall. Speaking of which, the audio forgot to include Bowie's sarcastic song, "Andy Warhol," which was nevertheless going through my head. Here are the lyrics, and if you don't know the tune, look it up on Youtube. http://songmeanings.com/songs/view/42519/. Bowie may have hung out with the Warhol crowd, but whether he respected him at the time is debatable. At any rate, the majority of visitors, who ranged in age from their 70s down to early teens, appeared enthralled and enthusiastic. One white haired fan of Bowie's own generation (late 60s) made a point of approaching me to declare ecstatically, "I wish I was on acid- this would be EVEN more amazing! Wow!" It reminded me that Bowie's generation straddled the hippie movement as it gave way to glam rock, and I found myself musing about which camp the older fans had once belonged.
The exhibit is audacious, exciting and appropriately loud. One leaves with a greater insight into the intensive creative processes which went into the development of the many phases and shifting characters of David Bowie, the artist, performer and man, whose profound influence on the (ch-ch-ch) changing sexual and social mores of the 70s and 80s is beyond dispute! It may be all lights and mirrors, but what we saw in the reflection he presented was a world of infinite possibilities, which we too could grasp.
LDH
