Auction house Sotheby's has completed the two-day sale of artworks and design items belonging to the late musician and collector David Bowie. The proceeds, which will go to Bowie's estate, totaled $41.1 million.
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Following the first day of the sale in London, a further 300 art and design items were sold on the second day of the auction on Friday.
Fifty-six records were set over the course of the two-day sale, which totaled $41.1 million (37.8 million euros).
The sale attracted attention both in the sale room and online after exhibitions of the works were organized in New York, Los Angeles, Hong Kong and London. Interest in Bowie's life and work had attracted huge interest, even before his death. The "David Bowie Is" exhibition, which opened at the Victoria and Albert Museum in 2013 before moving to eight other locations around the world, was seen by 1.5 million people.
During the two-day London sale, the soundtrack from "Ziggy Stardust: The Motion Picture" played in Sotheby's auction rooms as the late musician's artworks were sold. The items on sale represented about 65 percent of the work Bowie acquired in the 1990s and 2000s, according to Sotheby’s.
The pieces were chosen by Bowie's family from his vast collection with more than 200 works by many of the most important British artists of the 20th century, including Damien Hirst, William Tillyer, Frank Auerbach, Harold Gilman, Peter Lanyon, Henry Moore and Graham Sutherland.
In an interview printed in the catalog, Hirst recalled Bowie turning up in a designer suit at his studio: "I remember telling him to come to the studio in old clothes, but he turned up in brand-new expensive clothes; he said he didn't have any old clothes."
There were also sales well above the expected price for designer collections owned by the late musician, including for salt and pepper shakers.
Designed as a "musical pet," a Brionvega record player sold for 257,000 pounds (298,320 euros)
On a wall outside the auction room there was a quote from a 1998 interview Bowie had given, referring to Marcel Duchamp, the French artist known along with Picasso and Matisse as one of the three men to have defined the revolutionary developments in the plastic arts at the start of the 20th century: "Sometimes I wish that I could put myself in Duchamp's place to feel what he felt when he put those things on show and said: 'I wonder if they'll go for this. I wonder what's going to happen tomorrow morning.'"
jm/cmk (EFE, AFP)
From Ziggy Stardust to Blackstar: David Bowie's career in pictures
Pop idol David Bowie died on January 10, leaving the world his series of alter-egos, homages to Berlin and a beautiful last album.
Image: picture alliance/dpa/V. Jannink
Space Oddity
David Robert Jones was born in 1947. To avoid confusion with Davy Jones of The Monkees, he chose the name Bowie, inspired by the Bowie fighting knife. His earliest hit, "Space Oddity," was released in 1969, just five days before Neil Armstrong became the first man to walk on the moon. It introduced a fictional astronaut called Major Tom, a character which would reappear throughout Bowie's career.
Image: Victoria and Albert Museum
Ziggy Stardust
A series of personae would follow Major Tom. Bowie's most famous and iconic one, Ziggy Stardust, appeared for the first time in 1972. Ziggy was an androgynous alien rock star who served as a messenger for extraterrestrial beings. His dyed red hair and striking costumes had a punk glam-rock edge. Bowie said he tried to achieve "a one-man revolution" with his alter-ego: Many would agree he did.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/London Features
The Thin White Duke
A new Bowie persona was introduced in 1976, with the album "Station to Station," called the Thin White Duke. The red hair and the makeup were gone, and the eccentric glam suits were replaced by stylish, more conventional suits. But despite the more "normal" appearance, Bowie's personality was affected by the massive amounts of cocaine he was consuming at the time.
Image: Getty Images/Evening Standard
The Man Who Fell to Earth
This 1976 science-fiction film is about an alien who crashes on Earth. It was the first film in which David Bowie starred and there is still a cult surrounding the movie thanks to Bowie's performance, along with its surreal imagery. Bowie said he felt as alienated as the character he was depicting because of his extreme cocaine abuse at the time.
Image: imago/United Archives
The Berlin era
To get away from the drug scene in Los Angeles, David Bowie moved to West Berlin by the end of 1976. Living in a district with a strong Turkish community, Schöneberg, Bowie felt Berlin "was one of the few cities where I could move around in virtual anonymity. I was going broke; it was cheap to live. For some reason, Berliners just didn't care," he once told the magazine "Uncut."
Image: Masayoshi Sukita/The David Bowie Archive
Along with Iggy Pop
From 1976 to 1979, he created his "Berlin trilogy," three albums which include the influential "Low" (1977), co-produced by Brian Eno and Tony Visconti. This album radically departed from his usual songwriting to experiment with avant-garde music. Sharing an apartment with Iggy Pop, Bowie also contributed to his albums, "The Idiot" and "Lust for Life."
Image: Getty Images/Evening Standard
Christiane F.
The German film "Christiane F." from 1981 tells the story of a teenager who becomes a drug addict and a prostitute in the seedy Bahnhof Zoo area in West Berlin. David Bowie appears in the film, when the 12-year-old Christiane sneaks out to see him in concert. The film (and the non-fiction book it is based on) both acquired cult status - Bowie's soundtrack certainly boosted its success.
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Labyrinth
Bowie will also be remembered by many children of the 80s as Jareth, the Goblin King, in the 1986 fantasy film "Labyrinth." Directed by Jim Henson, the creator of the Muppets, and produced by George Lucas, most of the characters in the film were played by puppets.
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Let's Dance
Confounding all Ziggy Stardust fans, Bowie turned up once again with another radical style shift in the 80s, surfing on the New Wave. He teamed up with Queen for the hit single "Under Pressure" in 1981 and his commercially greatest hit of the decade was "Let's Dance" from 1983.
Image: AP
Where Are We Now?
Bowie kept reinventing himself throughout the rest of his career, reuniting for example with Brian Eno in 1995 for the concept album "Outside," which put back his musical genius in the spotlight. In 2013, he released a single for his 66th birthday called "Where Are We Now?" in which he contemplates his Berlin years.
Image: www.davidbowie.com
Blackstar
He celebrated his 69th birthday on January 8, 2016 with the release of another album acclaimed by the critics, "Blackstar." Through his death two days later on January 10, the world discovered that Bowie had spent the last 18 months fighting cancer. "Blackstar" testifies one last time to his perpetual reinvention and musical genius.
