Back in the 1990s, David Bowie asked me to write the catalogue essay for a London exhibition of his own works — vibrant, colorful, soulful, and often poignant paintings showing the typical leaps of imagination and flights of fancy that were so familiar from his day job. I was pleased — make that delighted — to accept the commission, of course, and as I got to know Bowie a little during that decade it became apparent how passionately interested he was in the visual arts.
He even forgave me, with the trademark twinkle in his eye, for retrospectively pooping one of his biggest art parties — a celebration held in Jeff Koons’s studio in New York in 1998 to launch the book by British writer William Boyd about Nat Tate , the early twentieth century New York abstract expressionist, who tragically committed suicide by leaping from the Staten Island ferry. At this gathering of the great and good of the New York art scene, Bowie read a passage from the book, as the assembled throng drank their champagne and nodded gravely in appreciation of the great Nat Tate.
After conducting my own researches, I revealed on the front page of The Independent a few days later (rather ruining the London launch of the book) that Nat Tate had never actually existed and Bowie, whose company had published the book, had been part of a plan to fool the art world and the world generally. Boyd’s satire on the art world and art history would have greatly appealed to Bowie, whose passion for art could never preclude his sense of mischief.
Indeed, when we talked about that passion, intensity was always mixed with his ever present humor, especially his trademark chuckle. Bowie always seemed to be smiling. Who can imagine him with a frown on his face? Once, when a painter’s racy love life was mentioned, he leaned forward, opened his eyes wide, and retorted: “How very unusual for an artist,” immediately followed by that infectious chuckle.
Bowie once confided to me: “I live 90 percent of my life in my head.” Certainly, he hid behind stage personas and his real feelings were rarely transparent. But about his passion for art he was open.
In 1994, unusually for a rock superstar, he joined the editorial board of Modern Painters magazine and interviewed artists such as Damien Hirst and Tracey Emin (also showing his interest in African art by writing a five page review of the inaugural Johannesburg Biennale in 1995). as well as launched his art book publishing company, and in 1996 played Andy Warhol (also the subject of an early album track) in Julian Schnabel’s 1996 biopic, Basquiat.
What I had not fully realized until now was how extensive and eclectic was Bowie’s own art collection, and what a great supporter of British art he was. Now everyone will have a chance to see this, as 400 works from his collection are to be sold in November by Sotheby’s at a London auction, with preview showings in New York, Los Angeles, Hong Kong and London. There are world famous international artists, to be sure, but the heart of the collection comprises modern and contemporary British art — 200 works by 20th century British masters including Henry Moore, Graham Sutherland, Frank Auerbach and Damien Hirst.
Simon Hucker, senior specialist in Modern and Post-War British Art at Sotheby’s, says: “As a collector, Bowie looked for artists with whom he felt some connection, and for works that had the power to move or inspire him. This is what led him to British art of the early and mid-20th century in particular, which, of course, also led him home.”
Living abroad for much of his later life, Bowie reached for home through his art collection. He was drawn to the painters of London’s streets such as Frank Auerbach and Leon Kossoff, whose tutor David Bomberg Bowie also collected. Bowie’s fascination with the British landscape is also represented in his collection, represented first in the St Ives school and then by later painters such as Ivon Hitchens and John Virtue.
A preview in London now runs until August 9 and when I visited I was struck, though hardly surprised, by Bowie’s eclectic, sometimes provocative, but always fascinating tastes in art and design.
The first thing that struck me on entering the show was not a traditional artwork at all, but a 1966 record player designed by Italian brothers Achille and Pier Giacomo Castiglione. For anyone who wants to listen to their music on the same player that Bowie listened to his, the sale estimate is only £800. On the wall next to it a list of “25 Albums That Could Change Your Reputation’ chosen by Bowie, everything from the Velvet Underground, Syd Barrett and The Incredible String Band to Charlie Mingus and Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring. With Bowie songs playing in the background this is clearly one to visit for the fan of his day job as well as the art enthusiast.
The latter though would be impressed by Bowie’s patriotic fervor. He was a champion of the St Ives artist Peter Lanyon, whose work is represented here. Lanyon painted his large landscapes with threatening elemental forces, after taking to the skies in a glider to see the Cornish landscape from a radically different perspective.
Bowie saw things in British painters that others often did not. Damien Hirst is represented in the collection by a 1995 spot painting ‘Beautiful, Shattering, Slashing, Violent, Pinky, Hacking, Sphincter Painting’, estimate £250,000 to £350,000. Bowie had said of Hirst: “I think his work is extremely emotional, subjective, very tied up with his own personal fears — his fear of death is very strong — and I find his pieces moving and not at all flippant.”
But the collection is not limited to British art. From Marcel Duchamp and Jean-Michel Basquiat to contemporary African art and ‘Outsider’ artists from the Gugging Institute in Vienna it reveals a collector of wide-ranging passions and vision.,
The top lot in the sale at £2.5m to £3.5m is Basquiat’s 1984 canvas Air Power. Bowie wrote of Basquiat in Modern Painters: “It comes as no surprise to learn that he had a not-so-hidden ambition to be a rock musician. His work relates to rock in ways that very few other visual artists get near.”
But there is also much that is eminently affordable. Bowie was a fan of the eccentric Italian designer Ettore Sottsass and his revolutionary Memphis design group, with their kaleidoscope of forms and patterns. Some of Sottsass’s avant-garde furniture pieces can be acquired for around £1000, including his ‘Ivory’ Table, a playful piece that makes fun of the luxury market as it is not produced from the precious ivory of the title, but from cheaper, garishly patterned materials.
Sotheby’s says that the collection “has a mischief and an intellectual curiosity that clearly mirrors David’s approach to music and the creation of his stage personas. But there’s also a subtlety, a quietness which perhaps surprises.”
I would agree with all of that and add that the collection shows too a champion of the outsider as well as the established, of the British art movements. Indeed there is so much here that is quintessentially English, as Bowie himself always remained, wherever he lived and worked.
One can overdo affinities with the musician’s own life and youth, but it’s hard not to be struck that Harold Gilman’s early 20th century paintings of life in nondescript London homes must have resonated with Bowie, born in Brixton just after the Second World War, when the grand Georgian houses subdivided into flats and bedsits with their tall thin sash windows, linoleum floors and a stove for heating, were similar to the dwellings painted by Gilman.
It’s also notable and important that Bowie did not collect art in the way of many of his rock star peers, as trophies or investments, but because he loved and wanted to champion the artists he bought — and often loaned works from his collection to museums and galleries. In an interview in the New York Times in 1998, he said: “Art was, seriously, the only thing I’d ever wanted to own… It can change the way I feel in the mornings.”
We always knew that the visual arts informed his ideas, costumes and stage personas. What we didn’t perhaps know before viewing his collection is just how much they informed his music. Bowie memorably said of Auerbach’s rich sculptural painting: “It will give spiritual weight to my angst.” He added: “My God, yeah! I want to sound like that looks.”
”Bowie/Collector” will be on view Nov. 1–10 at Sotheby’s New Bond Street in London. Prior to the sale on Nov. 10-11, a preview highlights exhibition of Bowie’s works will travel to Los Angeles (Sept. 20–21), New York (Sept. 26–29), and Hong Kong (Oct. 12–15).
David Lister is former Arts Editor of The Independent
