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A creative spirit with a romantically Bohemian taste: that’s how one could define the collector David Bowie. A glance at his art and design collection reminds us how he was always driven by emotion when choosing the object of his dreams as well as something new, as a creation by the Memphis group - something totally out of the ordinary.
Growing up in South London, Bowie studied art, music and design before choosing to pursue a career as a singer in 1963 and becoming a pop icon. Exhibitions, interviews and especially the sale of his art and design collection, held post-mortem in London in November 2016, reveal that his passion for collecting haunted him for much of his life, occupying his most private interests and giving him happy “recreational” moments.
Investigating, choosing and selecting pieces for his personal collection, was an exercise which transformed Bowie over time and had also a strong influence on his artistic creations. His collaborators tell how Bowie's taste included conservative choices, a coherent love for the English school of the early and mid 20th century and a strong appreciation for international and eclectic works such as those of Basquiat.
Among the most sought-after pieces by the English artist are the creations of the Memphis Group in Milan, led by Ettore Sottssas - but also Michele de Lucchi, George Sowden, Martine Bedin and Massimo Iosa-Ghini. The first piece he owned was the Valentine typewriter, of which Bowie writes: “It started with a red typewriter, a beautiful thing produced by Olivetti. I typed up many of my lyrics on that. The pure gorgeousness of it made me type as much as my need to get the songs down on paper. I couldn't not look at it. I read that this guy Ettore Sottsass had designed it. Wow, he had designed the salt and pepper shakers in the kitchen, too. I must be drawn to his ‘thing’.”
What Bowie loved was Duchamp’s concept that anything could be art. It should come as no surprise then that Memphis' surrealist, eccentric, post-modern and iconoclastic design caught his attention. Some of Bowie's favorite pieces can also be found on intOndo: the Valentine typewriter, designed by Sottsass and Perry King; the Carlton bookcase by Ettore Sottsass; the Bay lamp and the Pausania lamp designed by Sottsass for Artemide; the Brionvega radio by Castiglioni and the Cubo radio by Marco Zanuso and Richard Sapper.
Bowie became more and more passionate about Sottsass and once wrote in 2002: “Even now the jolt, the impact created by walking into a room containing a cabinet by Memphis - the Carlton, for instance - is visceral. It's true that you can't put another piece of furniture within the same space. There is just no aesthetic room. All networks of proposition are trammelled by this one item. Terrific. It's a remix, rap, it's hip-hop. Would all of the Starcks and Lovegroves of the world please stand and salute the greatest designer of the last fifty years? Your doors were opened by this man. Ettore Sottsass.”
