"Heroes" - Bowie's 1920s Berlin Movie Career

   

My new David Bowie "Heroes" movie poster print is the result of taking a heap of influences and putting them into the what-if Moulinex of Art. 

 

So, what do we know? Bowie recorded "Heroes" in Berlin, at Hansa Studios by the Berlin Wall ("Standing by the wall" in the title track). Bowie was an art-lover and a fan of the German Expressionists, and based the rather demonstrative hand gestures seen on the front cover of the album...

 

 

...on the stiff gestures in Erich Heckel's work, particularly this painting 'Roquairol':

  

 

And so this was my jumping-off point for this new print. I wondered what if Bowie had been around in the 1920s in Berlin, what would he have been doing, what art form could possibly encompass all of the abilities he had? And I decided he might very well have become a film-maker, specifically an Expressionist film maker. So I redrew Bowie's hand gesture - one of them, at least - from the cover of "Heroes" in an Expressionist style:

  

   

...and then reimagined the musician and production credits of the album as the credits on an imaginary movie poster. 

  

   

(Note the Hansa Studios reference). Finally I added the phrase 'Wir können Helden sein' - literally "we can be heroes" around the hand.

    

    

Bowie purists may baulk at this, seeing as the translation he sings of that refrain in the German version of the "Heroes" single he recorded uses 'Dann sind wir Helden' as its translation. But I'm sticking to my schoolboy German here, and if it's wrong (it won't be, because there are no wrong answers in art) then that's merely an additional texture added to the picture. And in all art forms, texture is everything.

 

You can see the full listing for this new print and buy your own copy here.