006 - david bowie
(The painter and collector)

I got yelled at last weekend by a busker performing near the Santa Monica pier. I had done not much all weekend, so thought a bike ride to the beach would salvage my weekend and morale. I have a different best friend who sends me interesting photos from his life in New York. Motivated to reciprocate the act, I hit the brakes when I saw a busker giving it their all to a popular cover song. With the sunset in mind and in frame, I snapped my picture from a distance and the music stopped. “I wish this was as easy as taking a video! No free videos! You gotta tip!”

The busker started to pack up. The only other person enjoying the show turned back to look at the person who ruined it and saw me. He put his arms up like he was playing basketball and looking for a foul and yelled: “Come on, man! You killed the vibe! Give the man a tip!”

I introduce to you: David Bowie
(The painter and collector)

A few weeks into writing about art, I felt uncomfortable and unqualified. Someone asked me: “How do you choose the next artist you’re going to write about?” I answered, “I have no idea. I can only comfortably name seven artists and five of them are in the can.” As a numbers person, art is outside of my comfort zone. I have feelings as a result of consuming art and sharing these is not.

Still, drifting in a pool of uncertainty, I went to my art safe place, Youtube, and a Sotheby’s video released one month ago was staring at me: The Art Collection of David Bowie. Sotheby’s, I recognize the name, but please do not ask me to pronounce it out loud. I know they’re connected to the art world and I guess they also dabble in Real Estate because they have a corner office across from the Malibu Lagoon. Assets! They do assets and I guess Youtube. I clicked on their video.

I learned about David Bowie, his art collection, and how it influenced his own life and creative process. I was hooked and quickly reminded of something I declared in my first entry: Art, it’s all connected. The feelings of discomfort and doubt, like the busker, were leaving me.

For Bowie, his musical and visual art were entwined. When faced with a creative obstacle in his music, he used visual art to problem solve: “I would often revert to drawing it out or painting it out. Somehow the act of trying to recreate the structure of the music in paint or in drawing would produce a breakthrough.” I’ve heard comparisons between brushstrokes and rhythm in music, but this is the first I’ve heard of a musician painting their music to work through it. David Bowie, a literal visionary. Don’t be discouraged to try this yourself, but careful who you tell: “I’m painting the music I see.”

Art played such a large role in Bowie’s life. Three albums he contributed to have cover art influenced by German artist, Erich Heckel. Learning about album art and its influences will be a new deep dive for me. I couldn’t resist peeking into another video by asset-manager, content-creator Sotheby’s where I learned animal balloon artist Jeff Koons was once married to an Italian with porn, politics and music on her resume, but back to Bowie.

He drew daily inspiration from one painting in particular, The Head of Gerda Boehm, and instructed his team to never rotate it out of his home. “The work can magnify the kind of depression I’m going through, but the same painting on a different day can produce in me an incredible feeling of triumph.” Sunny mornings with Gerda brought us Let’s Dance, and the cloudy ones Hallo Spaceboy, perhaps. And maybe the coolest reaction to a painting I’ve ever heard, he said simply: “I want to sound like that painting looks.” Globs of molded paint varying in color and thickness. Sign me up to get lost in that groove.

It may take a while for me to feel comfortable moving between numbers and words, but if I’ve learned anything from Bowie, I need to embrace the discomfort: “Always go a little further into the water than you feel you’re capable of being in. Go a little bit out of your depth and when you don’t feel that your feet are quite touching, you’re just about at the right place to do something exciting.” And in this alleged world of no free videos, the algorithm gifted me a counter-sentiment to my insecurity, compliments of Bowie: “I feel it doesn’t necessarily have to just fall into the laps of the art world to write about art.” — Phillip Dillon

Here are a few other quotes of david’s that made me think or smile:

“I always want a certain abstraction. Art should be open enough for me to develop my own dialogue with it.”

“The most interesting thing for an artist is to pick through the debris of a culture, to look at what’s been forgotten or not really taken seriously. Once something is categorized and accepted, it becomes part of the tyranny of the mainstream, and it loses its potency.”

“Most artists tend to think that our opinions are a lot more important than other peoples in some way. Often we feel we have the key to something. I don’t think that we do at all. I just think we dwell on it more. We tend to look at the world as some usable substance more than a non-artist would.”

“Never play to the gallery…Always remember that the reason that you initially started working is that there was something inside yourself that you felt that if you could manifest it in some way, you would understand more about yourself and how you coexist with the rest of society.”

When asked if he liked Francis Bacon’s work? Bowie answered: “No. Two or three pieces I find extraordinary…But he weakened fast. His demise was swift.”

“I’m trying to think if there’s anyone who truly has honed his craft to a point that you are really, really glad that he stayed with one thing all the way through his life. Of course there is. How stupid of me! Bob Dylan.”