Among the stories out of New York during the recent Fashion Week extravaganza was one about the couture model, Andrej (or Andreja) Pejic, who has enjoyed great success parading down the runways of male and female shows alike.
Having just paged through the monumental catalogue for “David Bowie Is,” the highly anticipated exhibit devised by London’s Victoria and Albert Museum, and now on a world tour whose only announced U.S. stop is at Chicago’s Museum of Contemporary Art (Sept. 23, 2014-Jan. 4, 2015), I had just one thought: Pejic owes a serious debt to Bowie, the musician, actor, dancer, designer, arranger and producer who paved the way.
From the very start of his career in the early 1970s — whether decked out in London Mod-wear, mesh leotards, kimonos, glistening evening gowns or classic trench coats — Bowie was busy crossing the gender line. In both real life and on stage, he created personae, from the glittery Ziggy Stardust and Aladdin Sane (“a lad insane”) to the alienated “lodger” of his Berlin years, continually playing off his svelte, androgynous beauty. And much of the rest of his art followed suit. Of course his talent and intelligence went far beyond gender-bending as he experimented with everything from commedia dell’arte theatrics to techno-pop music.
Bowie, the golden boy who is now 67, has been a central figure in the pop culture universe of his time. Yet the question can be asked: Was he an “originating force,” or more of a brilliant Zelig-like figure who, over the course of many decades, possessed an uncanny “sense of the moment,” and was ingenious and creative enough to run with what was already happening?
For Victoria Broackes, who co-curated the Bowie show at the Victoria and Albert, he is a bit of both.
“We even created a heading in the London exhibition, ‘David Bowie is… Plagiarism or Revolution’,” said Broackes. “His energy in seeking out new ideas, and his skill in filtering them to find exactly what he needed, and the right people to create them with, is a major contributor to his success. He was influenced by German Expressionism, Surrealism, Theatre of Cruelty, film, literature, French chanson and modern dance. And he introduced all this in his own innovative way to a very large number of people.”
The Bowie influence has been pervasive in the worlds of music, fashion, film, the visual arts and beyond — from Andy Warhol and photographer Cindy Sherman, to the avant-garde Japanese designer Kansai Yamamoto and the late couture fantasist, Alexander McQueen. And what other pop singer can make the claim that one of his most enchanting songs, “Space Oddity,” was beamed down to Earth by a genuine astronaut? (Chris Hadfield did just that in 2013, while serving on NASA’s International Space Station.)
The “David Bowie Is” exhibition, which will consume the entire fourth floor of the MCA, focuses on the artist’s creative processes and collaborative work, and suggests just how pervasive his influence has been. Almost all the material in the show — nearly 400 objects, including photography, album artwork, original fashions, set designs, musical instruments, classic cigarette packs, never-before-seen storyboards, handwritten set lists and lyrics, childhood memorabilia, sketches, costumes and rare performance material — was drawn from Bowie’s own extensive archive of 75,000 objects, itself suggesting the artist had a sense of his own legacy.
The exhibit’s multimedia design introduces advanced sound technology by Sennheiser, and video installations that help create an immersive journey through Bowie’s artistic life. In addition, the MCA will present many music, theater and dance programs that riff on the Bowie influence.
“We’ve given the show a bit more of a chronological structure than it had in London,” said Michael Darling, the MCA’s James W. Alsdorf chief curator, who was instrumental in bringing it to Chicago. “And you can see how Bowie was active in each of the scenes that flowered over the decades, and how he inserted himself into that flowering, always collaborating with others looking for the next border to cross. This is what enabled him to survive and remain relevant for so many years. There is nothing nostalgic about his work. He brought a real intellectual and philosophical grounding to what he did, constantly thinking about where we are as humans in the universe, and our role in society.”
Music has been the constant for Bowie (who declined all requests for interviews). But according to Darling, he was, from the start, a cultural sponge who “read lots of books (check out his list of 100 must-read volumes on the Internet), went to galleries and museums, knew all the hot-spots.”
For Petra Slinkard, curator of costumes with the Chicago History Museum, and a consultant on the Bowie exhibition, the big questions are: “Were all his different personae liberating or inhibiting to him? Did he hide behind them, or was it his truest form of expression? And has he now reached the point where he has no more need for transformation of the self through physical appearance?”
The V&A’s Broackes notes: “Bowie stands out not just for reinvention (his music changes but it is always unmistakeably Bowie), but also for the breadth of vision. Another part of his impact rests with us, the audience, and some intangible connection we make with the man and his music.”