|
|---|
 |
The year in review |
The Insider |
| Eminently cursed with highly developed cerebral faculties, David Bowie is an artist whose career is a testament to the power of absolute intelligence. I'd dare say a more intelligent artist in pop there may never have been (sorry Sting). His genius for calculation, his near absolute lack of spontaniety, his love for the idea of it all has served him well and its served him poorly. Still Bowie has laid down a radical blueprint for how a modern media icon should manipulate his mythology --record sales notwithstanding. |
 |
| The rapid turnover of "personas" --supported by a solid stable of collaborators-(David Mallet, Greg Gorman, Herb Ritts, Brian Eno, Carlos Alamar etc), the construction of wholesale "art" scenarios to frame them(concept tours, movies, flirtations with painters, dance companies, soda campaigns), the erudite interviews, the eye scalding dress-up antics, the inflation of humble pop noise to the level of high European art--Mr. Bowie has been impeccable in orchestrating the very structural business of myth making. When he dies they'll be PBS specials about all this. |
|
| So here came Outside-, His Majesties' Bold Bid To Restore The Glories Of His Lost Legacy and it was fascinating to listen to this prodigiously talented man emit a piece of work so spitefully off--so wilfully outside the truth of the current cultural moment that it was like watching an aging king defiantly setting himself ablaze to earn his subject's waning respect. And God knows the macabre spectacle was fascinating |
|
| As a star, Bowie has been a consummate liar ( the very idea of stardom is itself a lie) but ironically its within the tissue of those lies that he has been unblinkingly honest. In the1994 Mark Romanek directed "Jump" video he played a harried corporate executive driven to leap off the roof of his towering skyscraper. The video ends with Bowie smashed on the roof of a car, (but very elegantly arranged) -a retinue of grief stricken mourners filing past . Of course, vanity being what it is, on the last lines of the track ("Got to be-lieeeeve in something ") , Bowie just had to flick his eyes wide open to assure us that David Will Never Die. |  |
 |