“To keep music at the door of museums seems nonsense. It cuts off an important aspect of people’s cultural and social heritage and deprives museums of one of the most effective ways of bringing in new audiences.”
It would seem that these words of Eithne Nightingale, head of Access, Social Inclusion and Community Development of the London V&A Museum, resonated loudly with the museum’s curators who, when presented with un-precedented access to David Bowie’s personal archive, created the hugely-successful retrospective exhibition David Bowie Is...
Two years on and the Bowie-effect steadily continues to ripple into 2015 and now not only have international museums opening their doors to the audio-visual experience, but cinema theatres too.
The title, David Bowie Is..., immediately addresses an existential issue. On the one hand it gives the impression that there is much to show and say about Bowie, which there is.
It was in Malta, in 1969, that Bowie was singled out for best-produced record for the Malta International Song Festival
But, at the same time its incompleteness fits perfectly into the glove of the only constant that characterised Bowie’s life – change.
Right off the bat, we could say that this is not just a retrospective exhibition of the person, nor of the multiple personalities Bowie once was, but in a way, it is a crescendo of a person’s identity to the present day.
Born and named David Robert Jones, the rock ’n’ roll celebrity underwent a whirlwind of trans-formations which, more often than not, brought him treacherously close to spinning out of control.
But it was under the name David Bowie that he would be recognised for his musical talent and this would lead him to claim his first ever award... in Malta. It was here, in 1969, that Bowie was singled out for best-produced record for the Malta International Song Festival. Not too shabby, Malta.
However, his musical career took off, quite literally, with his alter-ego Ziggy Stardust – and that is also, unfortunately, the point at which we lose sight of David Bowie.
The ‘death’ of Ziggy Stardust doesn’t really bring back the old Bowie either, but propels him into a successive set of new phases, that of the Thin White Duke, the Berlin Trilogy and others, all the way up to 2013.
Here, we are presented with a performer who is made up of an outworldly collage of different identities – part Lindsey Kemp, part Andy Warhol, Iggy Pop, Brian Eno, Vince Taylor, William Burroughs and others. As a result, just a part was reserved for David Bowie – not the stage name, but the person. Pay attention and the exhibition mirrors all this.
His initial struggle to be accepted within the music industry was, furthermore, coupled with family tragedy and problems – the things which, in a way, make him seem more human.
Two of these incidents particularly shaped Bowie but feature surprisingly little in the exhibition. Schizophrenia was the mental disorder that plagued the Jones family, the thought of which naturally haunted Bowie throughout his life and his career. But Bowie was spared.
The exhibition sets a premise it cannot bring itself to complete. For Bowie, it was a continuous existential battle, constantly reinventing himself out of a dire need to survive. One adjective, one verb, one noun, would clearly not be enough.
The David Bowie Is... shows on Saturday at 8.30pm at St James Cavalier, Valletta. Tickets are available online.
www.sjcav.org