‘Cos Lenin’s on sale again…
The May issue of MOJO magazine has the above feature regarding the artist Scott King and an exhibition of his work at Munich’s Kunstverein gallery entitled: Marxist Disco! (cancelled).
As you can see above, the show features a bust of Stalin as Aladdin Sane and another of Lenin complete with similar facial adornment from the same glam period of Bowie’s glittery past…not to mention Karl Marx as Roy Wood and both Ian Curtis and Cher as Che Guevara.
When asked why he decided on the juxtaposition of totalitarianism and one of rock music’s more excessively flamboyant moments, Scott responded thus: “I don’t know yet. I had the idea while I was attending a lecture at the Marx Memorial Library in Clerkenwell. While I was listening, I started staring at a bust of Marx and I started to imagine how much more interesting everything might be if it was actually a bust of Roy Wood.”
I guess this kind of brings it full circle, as Bowie would often be seen sporting a medal of Lenin’s profile at the height of his Ziggy/Aladdin Sane fame in 1973, as evidenced in the picture above…
Marxist Disco! (cancelled) runs until April 13th after which it moves to New York’s Bortolami gallery in June.