If there could be a blueprint for how to mastermind the perfect cultural renaissance, David Bowie in 2013 may well have encapsulated that Lazarus ideal. Resigned to a hermetic hush since his 2003 brush with mortality, the last decade of retirement has only sporadically amplified into brief public appearances.
Taking the music world completely by surprise by announcing a new album in January was yet another major magic trick, a masterful coup d’etat, from the artist who, above all others in the second half of the 20th century, has been the conjurer at the forefront of surprise, shock and reinvention. Riding in the slipstream of fervent Bowie hysteria – fuelled by the unassailable fact that the album, when it arrived, was a remarkable return to form – the Victoria & Albert museum unveiled plans for a ‘blockbuster’ Bowie retrospective, with demand quickly outstripping availability. In the absence, for now at least, of any planned live appearances, this may well be the closest experience people will get.
And so, having pre-booked 3-and-a-half months in advance for one of the last remaining time slots, I went along on a scorching July weekday afternoon to experience for myself what critics had been clambering over each other to ladle on bountiful praise.
It certainly is a well-stocked and comprehensive exhibition of artefacts; clearly Bowie has spent his whole career hording costumes and stage props with a show of this magnitude in mind. It feels fresh and invigorating – big screens draw you in to various distinct eras of his career whilst relevant props are placed like satellites around the moving images. As you progress through, the corresponding music and commentary pieces are triggered via headsets. Although in principle this is an interesting concept, often I found the audio dropped in and out like a phone signal on a train, leaving me to try and reorient my position in order to spark the sound into life once again.
One of the prevailing impressions to be left with is the extent of Bowie’s constantly inquisitive, sponge-like absorption of the cultural landscape, his appropriation of whole swathes of influences, using and discarding them at will. From mime and performance art, to subversive literature (Ballard, Burroughs, Burgess et al), to Japanese costume design, Dadaist theatre of the Weimar Republic, nihilist philosophy (Nietzsche), to avant garde cinema (‘Metropolis’, ‘The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari’, etc.); all were experienced and siphoned through into his own artistic mission statements.
However, the exhibition is not without some flaws. The opening sections begin, predictably, by covering Bowie’s upbringing, roots and early musical endeavours, before moving onto his commercial break-through with the ‘Space Oddity’ album. After that the exhibition opens up both spatially and thematically, as though the curators suddenly decided to abandon any attempt at chronology. The effect of this diluting of any tangible cohesion is quite jarring, with costumes and stage props from the early-70s being placed side-by-side with those from the mid-90s, seemingly at random.
The other particular down-side was just how busy it was. Of course, this is to be expected with any ‘blockbuster’ exhibition and you are never going to enjoy the perfect viewing experience. But by allocating tickets according to specific time slots, and subsequently all tickets selling out, the result is that no matter what time you opt for, the attendance will be at a constantly high density. This could be overlooked were it not for the proliferation of so many small scale items of memorabilia, text plates and other miscellany that force you to effectively queue your way round them in a kind of frustrating assembly line. All this, realistically, then allows for is the most cursory of glances at items such as hand-written lyric sheets and photo negative strips that I felt warranted a lot more attention.
Of course it could be argued that such grievances are merely churlish given the event’s scale of publicity and the seemingly universal appeal of its subject. For any fan it is, undoubtedly, a treat to be granted such rare access to these treasures, and despite my misgivings, the undeniable outcome is to leave feeling even more in awe of a creative artist who imbues that oft misused, but in this case surely justified, label of genius.
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