h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

As a Painter:- While he is possibly my favourite pop/rock star his paintings are truly awful. Having gone through art school myself I'm afraid his ideas are on a par with a pretentious 6th former as are the technique and execution. A poor painting of his features in the video for Look Back in Anger (one of my favourite songs of his). But you got to admire his pluck for daring to put his daubings out there in the real world. Conversely Paul McCartneys solo work has not been as experimental or as cutting edge (despite some odd and little known side projects) but his paintings are 10x better than Bowies.

Modern Painters magazine: Bowie has for over a decade now been one of the editors/contributors to Modern Painters magazine. It started in the 80s under the editorship of the slightly stuffy Peter Fuller as a magazine focusing on painting (obviously) but after Fullers tragic death started including articles on photos, pop culture and fiction. It has recently gone through another change and while the content is still of a high quality (Matthew Collings contributions are great) the presentation is more of a tabloid format. In comparsion to its competition it is far better then Art Monthly which is a dreadfully pretentious and dull looking mag. And it is now streets ahead of Art review which turned from being a nice midlle of the road publication under David Lee to the 'Hello' magazine of the art world featuring photo spreads of people in posh frocks sipping champagne at yet another opening at the White Cube gallery. Yuk!

Bowie famously interviewed the French painter Balthus for Modern Painters. Some people liked his interview style and some didn't. Personally I thought it was OK but I can see that given the chance to interview a very old man who may pop his clogs soon (is he dead already? Not sure) they could have maybe given the assignment to someone with a bit more artistic clout such as David Sylvester.