Now, many of today’s right-on revisionists claim Bowie as a Wilde-style gay martyr, but frankly, in the early 70s, everybody fucked anything that moved, in a pansexual frenzy of youthful hormones, and certainly not exclusively gay. If anything, he’s more tranny patron saint than butch or bitch. And please, never forget Bowie’s later gay denials.
Remember, we’re discussing a dude whose last artistic gasp, Scary Monsters, was 33 years ago, seen by some as a short-hand Jesus parallel sufficient to deify Davey as the Second Cumming!
Okay, enough about the man; let’s get to his droppings, or, as they’re sanctified here, his exhibition. Like the similarly OCD Warhol, it’s obvious our cold, calculating Davey threw nothing away, drawing up his 5-year success plan with Soviet ruthlessness even in the white-heat of Ziggymania.
The show’s a pop train-spotter’s delight; any one with half a brain can trace Bowie’s cynical appropriation of Kraftwerk and Roxy Music’s electronica and the rising disco boom, and gee, add a dash of Jayne County, the New York Dolls and Warhol, and you got yourself one perfect, Leper Messiah!
Hell, even the show’s title is a direct rip from French poet Rimbaud – ‘I is another’, people – but yeah, at his best, Bowie’s an inspired plagiarist, an instant, lightning-rod chameleon of the Über- chic.
So, maybe I’m in a puzzled, sickened minority watching sycophants hoover up and worship the guy’s creative process, because, after all, isn’t Bowie’s peak legacy his actual, always available albums? Why pin genius to a museum wall and hope for a rub-off Midas effect? Remember, only infantile art cares for the community; the true artist has a psychopathic focus on creative provocation regardless of social consequences, as the Marquis de Sade’s ideal of liberty led to guillotined aristocrats!
And that, my dears, is why draconian governments adore censorship and book-burnings. So bulk-buy Bowie while you can- who knows when he’ll declared a class A drug!
• Victoria & Albert Museum, Cromwell Road, London, SW7 2RL. Until August 11th. 10am-5.45pm daily, 10am-10pm on Fridays. £15.50.
• www.vam.ac.uk
