Ten years ago, the legendary David Bowie died, leaving behind a legacy of perpetual reinvention and an artistic vision that refused to be confined to a single medium. His death on January 10, 2016 — just two days after releasing his haunting final album Blackstar — marked the end of a life lived in constant creative metamorphosis. Beyond music, he was an actor, fashion icon and visual artist whose creative journey actually began with painting before his musical career took flight.
It will come as no surprise that David Bowie was an artist in the all-encompassing sense. His fascination with mime, costume design, makeup and theatrical performance were all extensions of a singular artistic philosophy: that identity itself is a canvas. But Bowie’s relationship with visual art extended beyond his own creative output. He was a voracious collector, amassing over 400 works including pieces by Jean-Michel Basquiat, Damien Hirst and Marcel Duchamp. Bowie co-founded an art-book publishing company, served on the editorial board of Modern Painters magazine, and when he hit creative roadblocks in songwriting, he would turn to drawing and painting to work through them, letting one form of art inform the other.
Our Culture presents 10 paintings of Bowie’s to commemorate the anniversary of his death — works to contemplate while you listen to the musician‘s iconic playlists today, reminding us that for Bowie, every medium was a new way to explore the restless question of identity itself.
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Study – Hunger City, 1973/74
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Star from the Arcana Tarot Card Series, 1975
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Yukio Mishima, 1976
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Portrait of JO, 1976
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Child in Berlin, 1977
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Self Portrait, 1978
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Ancestor, 1995
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Dry Heads Capeown, 1995
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Self Portrait, 1996
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DHead XLVI, 1997
