ie-collaborator Nile Rodgers and Brit- Award-winning indie rock band The Last Dinner Party. Unrealised projects Bowie’s extraordinary creative capacity included ideas for a number of projects that were never realised. The exhibits will show some of these, ranging from an idea to adapt George Orwell’s 1984 to plans for Young Americans and Dia- mond Dogs films. DAVID BOWIE (1947 – 2016) in detail A musical innovator and cultural icon, Bowie’s career spanned five decades and had a major influence on the contempo- rary arts. A chameleonic figure, Bowie periodically reinvented himself, creating on-stage personas such as Ziggy Star- dust and the Thin White Duke. An ear- ly example of Bowie’s visual theatricality is the cover of his third album, The Man Who Sold the World, released in April 1971. The cover image, photographed by Keith McMillan, presents a deliberate- ly provocative and androgynous image, with Bowie wearing a ‘man-dress’ by pi- oneering 1960s designer Mr Fish. The cover was considered too controversial for the American market and replaced with a cartoon image of a cowboy carry- ing a gun. Nonetheless, Bowie wore such a man-dress on his first tour of the U.S., provoking a range of strong reactions. Perhaps one of Bowie’s most enduring looks is embodied in the Aladdin Sane album sleeve, designed by Pierre Laro- che. Aladdin Sane was the first album
that Bowie wrote and released from a position of stardom, while cultivating his Ziggy Stardust alter ego. The cropped hairstyle and flash of red and blue facial make-up was imitated by fans attending his concerts. It remains one of the ulti- mate Bowie signifiers. During the 1973 Aladdin Sane tour, Bowie was photographed by music pho- tographer Kevin Cummins. Cummins went on to photograph Bowie through- out his career, with the pair forming a close working relationship. The V&A ac- quired one of Cummin’s classic David Bowie photographs: a bold black and white image that captures the on-stage drama of Ziggy Stardust – the pose, the hairstyle and the flamboyant jumpsuit – yet still conveys a sense of truthful in- timacy. Bowie rejected Ziggy in the mid 1970s and adopted the paired down perso- na of the Thin White Duke. He record-
ed several studio albums and toured in 1976 and 1978. The V&A has two ra- re newsprint programmes from these tours. Bowie designed the programmes himself, in the style of interfold news- papers. Although they are only two years apart, they represent two dis- tinct periods of Bowie’s life and career. The Isolar programme features photo- graphs shot during the recording of the Station to Station album, as well as im- ages from the filming of Nic Roeg’s cult science-fiction film The Man Who Fell to Earth, in which Bowie starred. The Isolar II programme features photo- graphs taken while Bowie was record- ing his albums Low and Heroes with Brian Eno. By this time, Bowie had taken up residence in Berlin, having moved there to escape the drug scene in Los Angeles and to retire the contro- versial White Duke. Low and Heroes, along with Bowie’s 1979 album Lodger, have since become known as The Berlin Trilogy, recognised for their innovative electronic/ambient sound. Bowie took on his longest, largest and most successful concert tour in 1983: the Serious Moonlight Tour, intended to support his then latest album, Let’s Dance. For this tour, Bowie shelved the flamboyance of Ziggy Stardust, the hol- low cool of the Thin White Duke and the arthouse austerity of the Berlin era, reinventing himself once again as a smooth-suited purveyor of cosmopoli- tan pop. Collections include several Seri- ous Moonlight tour merchandise items, featuring artwork by acclaimed design- er/illustrator Mick Haggerty, which per- fectly captures this slick new era.
V&A East Storehouse, London
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