Bowie cuts a dash - or Leave 'em wanting more, Ziggy

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2013
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13 August

I am not so sure that the (V&A) Victoria and Albert Museum has always been - or given the impression of being - a museum of art, design and performance. No matter.

If it is one, then why not David Bowie is, and, one wonders, what will be next when this has been the most successful exhibition ever ?* I had not endeavoured to catch it in the flesh (even if that had been possible). However, perhaps I had not been given enough idea how ambitious and adventurous it was, until two of the curators (or it may just have been a co-curator who was shown on film), Victoria Broackes and Geoffrey Marsh, presented the live relay to-night.

David Bowie from @V_and_A at @CamPicturehouse brought back memories of the Apollo missions, Starman, Let's Dance, Warhol, Ashes to Ashes...
— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) August 13, 2013

Popular exhibitions are often quite a lot more choked than we were given an impression of, and, for that reason, I tend to avoid the irritation of unwanted bodily contact, the neck-craning, and the sheer exhaustion that builds up when one has to look at it all in one go, so this was an ideal glimpse. Glimpse, because one's not going to see everything, and maybe makes a mental date with Paris in 2015 to look at it then.

I speak quite personally, but costumes without anyone in them say little to me, whereas The American Museum's display of Marilyn Monroe gowns and other objects that she had come close to or owned had the advantage of stills and clips from films - I am not saying that this one did not, but I was left cold by seeing the outfit that Bowie had worn to perform 'Starman' on t.v. Partly because, as with that for it and for 'Ashes to Ashes' and others (I was cheated of any more than hearing 'Let's Dance'), I remembered seeing it, partly because the handiwork looked faded, jaded, unreal, a bit like a sloughed-off skin, it said nothing much to me, whereas we dwelt on it and enthused.

If this was truly a thematic approach to presenting different aspects of Bowie, then the inter-titles really did not signal very well that it was being taken, and so I could not fathom why we suddenly jumped forward to the Union Flag frock-coat from Earthling (an album from 1997 that I admire, so it was a shame to get so little sense of it). Then we jumped back, and hardly came anywhere near until footage from Glastonbury in 2000.

#DavidBowieis that guy strangely talked of in the past tense - and, as one member of the public said, he's not even dead !
— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) August 13, 2013

Curiously, too, we spent a few minutes on how the cover of the album 'The Next Day', but - as I do not yet know it - I had no notion whether I was being played any of it. In one breath, decades of a career as performer**, song-writer, actor were being celebrated, but it felt as though the last decade and a bit were, by omission, being written off. I do not know if that is a fair impression, but it was the one that I got - if others felt at any level that recent projects or work were not being endorsed by this event (whatever the exhibition might do), at least that balance was redressed to an extent by the guests whom Marsh and Broackes brought to the Nineteen Eighty-Four podium, complete with 'breaking the rules' quotation along the front edge.

Of these, Jarvis Cocker was most persuasive, whereas Kansai Yamamoto seemed to wander into a forest of incoherence of his own making, whence we could barely hear his voice. Christopher Frayling commended most highly Bowie's acting in The Man who Fell to Earth (1976), which again unfortunately suggests that he might as well have spared his efforts since, as that is a while ago (at least, though, he did not mention Absolute Beginners (1986), whose source had been waved at us...). Much more than this, the enthusiasm of talking heads from what seemed to me members of the public (against an uncrowded display) was telling.

I wonder when Bowie, who played Warhol (I hadn't known that fact, @V_and_A), first came to know him and his approach, @CamPicturehouse...
— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) August 13, 2013

Overall, I was very pleased to have seen this very high-quality relay. What did lessen my enjoyment of many of the videos was the V&A branding, with banners either side, and a compression of the image into a square (in one case, maybe to the detriment of the aspect ratio), for what I love best about film is that it seems to disappear into nothing at the edges, and this treatment made it less than immersive. Bowie's ambition and self-belief were strongly stated, but we had no evaluation at all of that beautifully distinctive quality to his singing voice.

Still, maybe there was too much to say in 90 minutes, although I would have thought that the concentration on his handwriting, writing techniques and skill could have tempered by mentioning the delivery of the lyrics (or the strength of his music (against his words), or how it has been variously realized...).

Now out of David Bowie is... happening now via relay from @V_and_A at @CamPicturehouse: a kaleidoscopic tour through a shape-changing career
— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) August 13, 2013

End-notes

* Yet I remember that there had been timed tickets when the tapestries from St Peter's that had been made from the Raphael Cartoons came to London, and also that I could not get into the William Morris show.

** At some point early on, he seemed to have played tenor sax - at least, was photographed holding one. What could his sax tone have been like, and do people rate him as a guitarist (again, no comment to-night) ?


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Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)