Review: David Bowie Is

When the David Bowie Is exhibit from the Victoria and Albert Museum arrived in Chicago for its only US stop, I was very excited, mostly because the Victoria and Albert was one of my favourite museums in London. When I lived there, I basically moved into the V&A for the weekends when I was not working. To me, it is one of the most informative and fascinating places in the world. I learned more in the time I spent there than I did in a year of university. And of course, I was excited about the subject matter. I've always been a Bowie fan, but never a mega-fan. I managed to acquire quite a lot of knowledge about him through reading about other bands and artists, but was not specifically interested in him or his music, nor did I care to explore beyond the usual glam standards. I was always more attracted and intrigued by his style and provocative antics than the music. Bowie himself did not help out with the exhibit, he merely gave the organizers access to his extensive archive in New York, only a fraction of which is represented by the exhibit. I went into the exhibit with the expectation of learning a lot about Bowie and his influences on culture and get really in-depth information about the writing and recording of his music.

David Bowie doing his spectacular makeup during the Ziggy Stardust tour

The visual experience was immediate and is almost overwhelming. Some of Bowie's most famous costumes are there; the quilted suit from the Top of the Pops performance of "Starman", the hilarious little romper suit decorated with rabbits, the "Life on Mars?" powder-blue suit, the clown outfit from the "Ashes to Ashes" video, the beautiful knitted jumpsuit from the 1970s that Kate Moss modeled for Vogue in 2003, and a million other beautiful capes, suits, and other dazzling outfits. It's basically worth the price of admission to see the clothes, especially those designed for Bowie in the 70s by Kansai Yamamoto (part of an interview with whom about his work with Bowie is shown). The fabrics are so beautiful that you just want to touch them and the prints are dazzling. I have no idea how the clothes have kept so well all these years; their colors are still as fresh as if they were made yesterday and they show almost no signs of wear. Great costumes from the 90s include the coat that Alexander McQueen designed for Bowie for the Earthling album cover and, my personal favourite, a distressed "frock coat" that Bowie designed himself for his 50th anniversary, an extravaganza of stunning fabric, ornate collar, and stylishly emphasized waist. There is also the hilarious, enormous "dress" (an imitation of a German cabaret act) that Bowie wore for a Saturday Night Live performance of "The Man Who Sold the World" in the late 1979, which was actually a prop he had to be encased in like a sarcophagus and bodily picked up and put into place because he was utterly immobile. I could probably go on about the costumes all day.

Bowie in the 1970s, wearing one of the Kansai Yamamoto capes on display at the exhibit

50th anniversary "frock coat" designed by David Bowie, 1997

Other items on display were also fascinating; Bowie's paintings from his stay in Berlin, lyrics, sketches for stage shows (by both Bowie and others), a very feminine-looking makeup layout that a makeup artist made for Bowie in the 1970s, seeing as he usually did most of his own makeup, photographs, etc. Some of the items feel a bit too personal, such as a cocaine spoon ca. 1975 and a tissue blotted with lipstick from the Ziggy years (who on earth saved that?!) but for the most part, they are things that are pretty awesome to see firsthand. One of my favourites was probably the handwritten lyrics to "Rock 'n' Roll Suicide." I might have gotten a bit emotional staring at them, wondering how Bowie must have felt writing them all those years ago. The whole exhibit concludes with a room screening various performances across the years, my favourite was the vivid, outrageous montage of 70s footage (mostly from the Ziggy Stardust tour) to "Rock 'n' Roll Suicide", but the three simultaneously played versions of "'Heroes'" was curiously uplifting. I really can never resist the moving appeal of that song. Not that I try very hard. The exhibit is also accompanied by various talks and performances (most of which have already happened), but the amazing Annie Clark (St. Vincent) will be giving a talk about Bowie on January 3 (it is sold out though).

However, I didn't get exactly what I hoped for. I am a naturally very negative person, finely tuned to pick up what is wrong with every situation I encounter, so I immediately noticed a million things I disliked. First of all, the exhibition labels have obviously been rewritten from the original exhibit, and need an editor so badly I wanted to scream. Their content is completely uninformative; one label, commenting on the Ziggy Stardust persona, simply contents itself with printing the lyrics to the eponymous song, as if anyone who walked into an exhibition devoted to Bowie somehow did not know it. Another label informed me that D.H. Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover initiated the relaxing of censorship in the 1950s when the ban on its publication was lifted in 1960. I stopped reading somewhere around the second room. It's also not somewhere you can go to with your friends. This was not a problem for me, because I went alone, but seriously, don't bring your friends. The exhibition is accompanied by a headset that responds to your location, so you can hardly have a conversation. (The headset sometimes gets confused and is rarely helpful, "Diamond Dogs" played on a loop wasn't a highlight for me, I happened to have heard the song before I came). This probably accounts for the ridiculously high price ($25/person). Getting back to the labels, not only are they unhelpful and jumbled, many are painfully trite. I cannot remember the exact wording, but one emphasized how Bowie's work encourages his audience to be whatever they want to be, explore and embrace themselves. Does this really need to be shoved in our faces in this infantile manner? Another thing that is presented inaccurately was Bowie's sexuality. The labels clearly make it seem, without explicitly saying so, that Bowie was gay. Now, I love how accepting Chicago is of gay culture. It's a major part of the city, Boystown famously being the first recognized gay neighborhood in the US. However, this is no reason to twist facts. No allusion is made to the fact that Bowie was married twice and is, very probably, completely heterosexual. Attention is called, instead, to the famous interview in Melody Maker in which Bowie declared that he was gay, and the "homoerotic stageplay" between Bowie and Mick Ronson. Most of the videos and photographs on display are things that almost any Bowie fan has already seen (such as the Thin White Duke "archer" photo and the "Starman" live performance), while I had really hoped for some archive footage and recordings. Unsatisfyingly small glimpses of both are given in the last gallery. The primary focus is on the period of Bowie's early youth through about 1980, everything else (such as the spectacular 90s albums) gets swept hastily out of the way, but I suppose we can't have everything.

A beautiful example of "homoerotic stageplay" from the 1970s, Bowie and his guitarist Mick Ronson

Having said all of this, I walked out of the exhibit with a mostly positive response. I learned a lot, but maybe not the things that I expected. I really wanted to know more about the songwriting process, and maybe have more interviews with Bowie and quotes from him, but the exhibit focused more on influences and things Bowie was interested in. Which it turned out I knew very little about. I had no idea about Bowie's fascination with Japanese kabuki theatre, and how it influenced his stage shows. I also did not know that Bowie was originally into mime (the late 60s performance called "The Mask" is hysterical!) or that he read very extensively (I got a lot of book recommendations from there, check out this list of Bowie's top 100 books), the works of sci-fi writer J. G. Ballard with their space-age themes being prominently emphasized. Also news to me was Bowie's starring in a Broadway production of "The Elephant Man." I had really previously underestimated Bowie. I came away with the impression of an immensely well-informed artist, who crafted his own image with purpose, intelligence, and creativity. The exhibit title, which I originally thought pretty silly, is in fact very appropriate for an artist whose creativity is literally expressed through self-generation. I did not walk out with any very clear idea of who the fuck David Bowie is, but I certainly walked out with a new respect for his work, his ability to integrate various art forms and try everything, to take risks. I also got the impression of someone who has a tremendous sense of humour about both himself and his audience. I'm not sure why, but I felt like Bowie kind of half manipulates us and half lets us in one the joke.

General information about the exhibit:
David Bowie Is, Chicago's Museum of Contemporary Art
September 23, 2014 - January 4, 2015
Price: $25/person ($15 for students with ID Tuesday - Friday)

The exhibit prompted me to listen to more Bowie and made me way more interested in him than I had bargained for. I've been listening to an enormous amount of his material of late, so he will probably appear here again soon. Very soon.