A tribute to
David Bowie
Let me start by simply saying that David Bowie was not an artist. David Bowie was and is PURE ART himself.
I must also admit that I am not the biggest fan of his music, because the truth is, I don’t have a lot of songs from him in my playlists. But that doesn’t make me ignore the immense genius behind his musical career (not to mention his stage performance, which is another story), and the invaluable legacy of his music in the whole industry and in all the careers of the artists who came after him.
Bowie is said to have made rock, pop, glam rock and electronic music in his career. But even if of course I don’t have the credentials to be a music critic, I would dare to say that, in reality, he hardly made music of any of these genres. Because Bowie was and is unique. Nothing sounds like Bowie. Nothing. Only Bowie sounds like Bowie. That experimental mania, that creative genius, that innate rebelliousness, all that, makes Bowie a musical genre itself, at least for me.
Now, this guy was aesthetically exquisite. I am very visually sensitive, and Bowie makes me drool every time I look at his performances, his photographs, his set design. Exquisite. Irreverent. Transgressional.
Although marketing played a very important role in his innumerable styles, I think that eclecticism, so present in his music as in his aesthetics, was part of the most intimate part of his being. The way he digested his characters, how he brought them to life to the point where you didn’t know where Bowie ended and where Ziggy began, for example, makes evident the fact that his characters were not just fiction, but part of him, and vice versa. Many artists have created their own alter egos, but none have mastered them to the point that David Bowie did.
Watching him acting, especially in The Elephant Man, is a delight. How much genius and talent can one man encompass? My God, he even painted works with their own unique character, and lets say, bright darkness. And may I add here that this oxymoron kind of feel is all around his multiple art expressions. But anyway, when it comes to multi-talents, it’s an understatement to say that Bowie set the bar very, very high.
And with all that there’s to say about Bowie’s artistic talents and the enormous legacy behind his music, I must say that what attracts me most about him is his bravery and graceful rebelliousness. A maverick, many have said.
Bowie was deliberately androgynous and publicly open to his own sexual complexity. This is especially significant.
Bowie was weird. The king of the weird, truth be told. And he was cool. He knew he was different and instead of hiding all those oddities, he made them public through an immobilizing explosion of eccentricity. Bowie didn’t follow the rules, he made his own rules, giving social space to millions of «weirdos» who lived in the shadows.
Bowie exuded sexuality, but which kind of sexuality? He was and still is a breath of fresh air in a world obsessed with labels and binary genres. He made being weird cool. He made being weird a virtue, not a curse. He made those who felt they don’t fit in to find their place. That’s why this portrait of David Bowie as Aladdin Sane is called «Cooloddity.»
For me, Bowie’s greatest legacy is that one. There is no greater value in the human being than that of authenticity and the ability to reinvent theirself not to please others, but to give freedom to the own soul. Being weird is cool, and that, Bowie thaught us.