Opening this weekend, the V&A exhibition “David Bowie is” reveals a first-ever retrospective and new, up-close look at cultural icon whose work continues to influence music, fashion, film, and art. While not directly involved with the show, Bowie did allow the museum unprecedented access into his archives, which included costumes, handwritten lyrics and music compositions, films, set design, album artwork, and photos from Bowie’s early years to present day.
Curators Victoria Broackes and Geoffrey Marsh compiled over 300 objects that explore Bowie’s creative vision. There are hand-drawn storyboards, detailed lighting plans for shows, and drawings for album covers. For die-hard Bowie fans, these never-seen-before items represent important artifacts from the man who has shaped their cultural landscape.
The exhibition also features paintings by Bowie, including one of IggyPop, as well as contact sheets from the iconic cover shoot for “Aladdin Sane” and TerryO’Neill’s legendary “Diamond Dogs” image featuring Bowie beside a Great Dane standing on its hind legs.
But, of course, the highlight of the show is the costumes. Bowie defined his stage persona through a distinct visual language: his attire enabled him to create characters from another reality, as well as to market a gender ambiguity that was both androgynous yet highly sexual, establishing a dialogue that some found outrageous and others relished. The showpieces also helped him to create brand awareness and a wild buzz around his performances. On display is the red, blue, and gold quilted Freddie BurrettiZiggy Stardust jumpsuit that Bowie wore while performing “Starman” on “Top of the Pops” in 1973 (with the video of that televised performance); many Kansai Yamamoto creations, including the sculptural body suit made for the “Aladdin Sane” tour, to other pieces inspired by Japanese Kabuki theatre, and the sharply cut suits during The Thin White Duke era. There are also more recent pieces, including a tailored coat designed by Alexander McQueen in collaboration with Bowie from 1997 featuring the British Union Jack flag that he wore for the “Earthling” album cover.
The costumes making the most visual impact are those which have been strategically placed around a room with floor-to-ceiling screens playing archival footage of Bowie's legendary performances; giving the knitted unitards and style-defining suits a context within the icon’s history.
ARTINFO UK caught up with Geoffrey Marsh, the co-curator of the exhibition to discuss the show, the fans, and some of the challenges of creating the retrospective.
Many people feel very passionately about Bowie. How do you create a show that will appeal and satisfy both seasoned fans and the general public?
We always knew we’d get a lot of fans and having seen the archive, it’s extraordinary. This is a tiny bit of what’s there. I talked to fans about it and they’d say, ‘Have you seen that? Why isn’t it in the exhibition?’ But we’ve also got to appeal to a general audience, like people who might just be interested in design, who may not be interested in his music particularly, but interested in his design process, which is what our function is.
What was the decision behind organizing the show thematically?
Essentially, when you do exhibitions, you either do it chronologically or thematically, there’s not many other ways to do it, although if David Bowie did it, I’m sure he’d come up with another way. Originally it was going to be a different kind of space, and we also thought about doing it chronologically, but that would require a hugely long, thin exhibition space. Also, most of the books that are written about him are sort of chronological, written by rock journalists that have an album-to-album feel, which [wasn’t how] we wanted to do it. We’re the performance department, so music’s important, but I’m not a musicologist. We thought about it thematically almost from day one.
There’s a photo wall at the end of the exhibition that documents Bowie’s extraordinary career and his influence over fashion, film, and music. Why the decision to have one big wall at the end, rather than having those photos throughout the show?
Photographers always want their photographs shown. And rightly so. Originally, we were going to have these key photos scattered throughout the exhibition, which is what we’ve done with the book, but there was just going to be so many arguments so in the end, we decided we’d put them all together and have a photo wall.
What were some of the challenges to mounting the exhibition?
Just in terms of exhibition planning terms, it’s the costumes which take time. First of all, from a conservation point of view, getting costumes to look good is a nightmare, and he’s so stylish. Having badly mounted mannequins would be a nightmare. In fact, we had to get a special mannequin carved by a sculptor because he had a 26-inch waist, so you can’t get a mannequin the right size. Also, he had very powerful thigh muscles, which is one reason, in a lot of images, he looks quite androgynous. His thighs are probably wider than his waist. So trying to get a mannequin takes a lot of time; it’s expensive to do all that mounting and they’re the sort of chess pieces you tend to start by and then you have to fill in around it, and that’s the final thing. Because if you look at it, most of it is small bits of two-dimensional stuff and trying to make all of that mean something is difficult.
“David Bowie is”, March 23 – August 11, V&A, London
Watch video on record-breaking Bowie exhibit: