Unmade Up (Recollections of a Friendship with David Bowie)

Unmade Up features much previously unseen artwork and photography of the enigmatic singer David Bowie, by his go-to artist of his heyday, Edward Bell. His commissions included the sleeve for Bowie’s 1980 album ‘Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps)’ which featured the number one single ‘Ashes to Ashes’. Bowie later bought all of Bell’s artwork for his private collection. “David Bowie: He soared, his eagle eye spied everything. His magpie nature urged him to plunder with ruthless perception. The Chameleon absorbed, then radiated, colours eclipsing. A butterfly mind, alighting, random and eclectic. Courageous, enigmatic, outrageous, and contradictory, he was Star Man, Elephant Man, a Diamond Dog, Tin Machine, the mythological peacock of incorruptible flesh. This account of my relationship with the man is written from the perspective of one who was of Bowie’s generation but preferred to listen to The Rolling Stones: who had been to art school, freelanced as a photographer and illustrator for magazines – Vogue, Tatler, The Sunday Times – a visual person, rather than musical. I greeted the shock of David’s death at first with a faint, sad shrug; the full impact was slow to dawn. If a drowning man is said to see his whole life experience on an instant in total recall, I was to experience a small death that lingered, and as it did so, forgotten incidents gradually returned with an extraordinary clarity. I felt compelled to write them all down, with the desire to share them.”