Like the artist himself, Brett Morgen’s film about David Bowie defies convention to create an extraordinary audiovisual tapestry of an endlessly creative life.
David Bowie as Ziggy Stardust in 1972: ‘an androgynous rockstar from outer space’.
Pictorial Press Ltd / Alamy Stock Photo
In June 1972, the first United Nations conference on the human environment coincided with the release of David Bowie’s iconic Ziggy Stardust album. Both still feel disturbingly relevant today
David Bowie in the film clip for Space Oddity: the song would become an anthem for space exploration with an enduring appeal.
YouTube
Fifty years ago, on July 11, 1969, David Bowie released Space Oddity. With its adventurous orchestration, unsettling harmonics and melancholy narrative, the now classic song captured a moment.
Several outstanding women were nominated, but Rainbow Murray, an adviser to the series, says the public vote showed how we’re still more inclined to recognise male achievement.
David Bowie was the tasteful thief and practised faker, and his 1974 album Diamond Dogs borrowed from everything to create a sublime post-apocalyptic soundscape.
A painting of Alex played by Malcolm McDowell in Stanley Kubrick’s film of A Clockwork Orange.
Alex DeLarge/Flickr
Three stories about researchers who have dabbled in self-experimentation – with varying results.
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Many great artists died in 2016: Bowie, Prince, Leonard Cohen, Paul Cox, Shirley Hazzard. It was a year of creative foment and as always, intense debate about the importance of the arts to a thriving, democratic society.
The music video for Justin Bieber’s Sorry is one of the contenders at Sunday’s MTV Music Video Awards.
Justin Bieber Vevo/Youtube
The MTV music video awards will be held on Sunday, putting this under-rated genre in the spotlight. Videos are inseparable from music in the digital age and the best examples deserve to be taken seriously as works of art.
Muhammad Ali pictured in Germany in 1976.
EPA/ISTVAN BAJZAT
The boxer’s death follows hard on the heels of David Bowie and Prince. The world is losing global icons and learning how to grieve using new and democratic tools.
Beyonce’s baseball bat wielding spree in Lemonade, left, bears more than a passing resemblance to the work of Swiss video artist Pipilotti Rist.
Left, still from Lemonade (2016), right, still from Ever is Over All (1997)
From Beyoncé and Lady Gaga to Kanye and even Rihanna, pop royalty is crazy for high art. Is this a phenomenon worth celebrating or are pop stars mining the art world to gain credibility?
Gaga at the Grammys: theatrical and pure high camp.
Mario Anzuoni
Lady Gaga and Lorde have both paid tribute to David Bowie in very different ways. Debating who did it better is rooted in an ideology of authenticity that pits rock against pop. In reality, Bowie embodied both.