David Bowie’s visual aesthetics and artistry

By Shade Bannigan-Davis

David Bowie was many things throughout his life: musician, husband, father, songwriter, provocateur, and so much more. Above all, he was an artist in every sense of the word. He was focused on the aesthetics of everything he created. For him, his artistry didn’t stop with a song recording — that was just its start. Every aspect of an album was part of his canvas.

The theatricality, the performance, his identity itself, were all part of the art. This is most obvious with his different personas. Throughout his career, Bowie created and took on a variety of different characters, most notably Ziggy Stardust, the elusive alien from Mars; the sleek Thin White Duke; and the dystopian Halloween Jack. Each persona was accompanied by a distinctive visual style. The high glam looks of Ziggy Stardust match the glam rock sound of his accompanying album. There was a great deal of open flared legs, wide shoulder pads, bright colours, and, of course, glitter. It’s visual excess at its finest.

This distinct visual aesthetic continues into the album’s cover art. The airbrushed cover style of The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars seems like it’s taken directly from a pulp sci-fi magazine from the 1940s. Bowie seems almost engulfed by the city around him, a small silhouette lost in a vast, confusing world, peering into the darkness. A displaced, otherworldly figure, dropped into the London night.

Bowie stuck with a theatrical aesthetic for his next persona: Halloween Jack. Looking like he just walked off the set for a pirate film directed by Mrs. Frizzel, Bowie dons an eye patch, a cravat, and a shirt with dramatically puffed sleeves. While he is definitely keeping one foot firmly in the glam rock style and sound, he pivots away from the more alien, ‘out of this world’ looks that defined Ziggy. This new persona leans towards reds and darker colours and the album contains more punk and soul influences.

The art for Diamond Dogs, the album that introduced us to Halloween Jack, was made with a similar airbrush technique as was used for The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust. Bowie reclines in a half-man, half-dog body before the New York skyline with two other man-dog hybrids. Despite the lighter colours, this cover has a darker, heavier aura when compared to The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust. There’s a near grotesque cruelty that comes through in the stares of the two other creatures. Bowie stares at the viewer with a gaze so intense that you may hesitate to look away first. This is perfectly in line for an album whose main inspiration is George Orwell’s 1984.

He took an even more dramatic shift for his next persona. Gone were the colourful, flamboyant, genderbending outfits and in came the gelled hair and tailored suits of the Thin White Duke. The sharpness of Bowie’s features now seems to emanate a cold sort of cruelty. This coldness paired well with the more electronic, synthesised sound of the album Station to Station, which introduced the Duke. The cover art, like the outfits, was notably desaturated. It is a grayscale photo taken from the set of The Man Who Fell to Earth, the film Bowie was starring in as he wrote the album. His character, the alien ‘Newton’, is stepping into the alien ship that will bring him home. The photo is surrounded by a stark, totalising white border. The cover is almost brutalist in its simplicity.

Bowie’s art goes far beyond the music. An album for him was made up of so much more than just the song. The costumes, the cover art, his own identity, all of it became another brushstroke, another shade of paint for him to use. The pivots between the visual aesthetics of each album helped create such distinctive identities for each of his works. Each album was its own world, its own reality. The influence of David Bowie’s dedication to aesthetics is visible throughout the art world. From artists like Kurt Cobain and Siouxsie Sioux, to Lady Gaga and beyond, his effect goes far. When looking at Bowie’s work, it’s hard not to be inspired. 

Image: AVRO via Wikimedia Commons