"I love this country," enthused David Bowie in a lengthy article he wrote after visiting South Africa in 1995. "It's very cool." The article, which appeared in the summer 1995 edition of English art magazine Modern Painters, offers a fascinating portrait of the performer’s spirited encounter with artists from the continent in newly democratic South Africa.Running to five pages and lavishly illustrated, the article is framed around his visit to Johannesburg (“an urban nightmare ... and really exciting”), which was hosting its inaugural art biennale.Bowie wrote elegantly about his enraptured appreciation of “city boy” William Kentridge. Along with Béninese sculptor Romuald Hazoumè, from whom he bought three works, Bowie described Kentridge’s collaboration with SA-born Danish artist Doris Bloom as the “white-heat high point” of his visit.Bowie’s enthusiasm for art from the continent grew out of a series of prints depicting the water spirit Mami Wati, which he bought in Nairobi in the late-1970s.“I have been mesmerised by the spontaneous and ever changing panorama of this continent’s artistic experiments,” he said in his 1995 article, part of a rich archive of writing by Bowie about art.Bowie’s prose style is lyrical and darting. Capable of the hard graft of listening – not just having an opinion – his article quotes various artists at length.Here’s Joburg resident Kay Hassan: “I don’t understand the reason for the Biennale so don’t want to be part of it.”And visiting Angolan António Ole, who last year represented his country at the 2015 Venice Biennale: “Here is SA they seem to be grappling with identity problems that we in Angola faced 20 years ago. I get impatient.”Perhaps it was Bowie’s stature that allowed him to gain the confidence of so many artists, including Beezy Bailey, who is quoted as feeling “bitter about affirmative action in the visual arts”. Bowie was unmoved by the artist’s complaint.“I’m not sure that I am willing to even remotely to buy into this as I see very little evidence in SA of white-destitute garrets, loaf-of-bread-and-water situations,” he noted.Although a member of the editorial board of Modern Painters and regular contributor to its pages, the reason for Bowie’s SA trip wasn’t strictly journalistic.American Vogue invited Bowie and his model wife, Iman Abdulmajid, to appear in a fashion editorial photographed directed by style maven Grace Coddington and photographed by American Bruce Weber.The Cape Town shoot included Bowie modelling with his wife of three years on a beach in his own clothing. Iman is also pictured in light-blue suit dancing with a young girl in a township.“There was such a jubilant energy buzzing about the whole country, and we met so many artists during that trip,” recalled Iman in 2012. And also royalty, notably Nelson Mandela, Miriam Makeba and Archbishop Desmond Tutu.There is a photograph circulating amongst artists that captures some of this democratic optimism. It shows Bowie in safari beige and camera with beaming artists Kate Gottgens, Barend De Wet and Wayne Barker.Bowie was gripped by De Wet’s “bulldog-like” physique, which he displayed in a full-length cast resin statue, as well as Barker’s Coca-Cola-branded paintings. He asked to buy one. Already sold, Barker told Bowie.On his return to London Bowie convinced his art dealer friend Bernard Jacobson to host a show of new South African art. Titled Mayibuye i Africa and held in late 1995, it included work by Kentridge and Ole.Bowie, however, bought work by painter Penny Siopis and sculptor Norman Catherine.“I keep my little wooden Catherines all over the house,” later revealed Bowie in the foreword to Catherine’s 2000 monograph.“I was told at the time that he bought my painting for Iman who was very ‘taken’ by it,” said Siopis who never met the performer in person.“As a student I loved his music,” added Rhodes-trained Siopis, “especially Ziggy Stardust which I played over and over when I was painting.”She recalled dancing to Bowie at a party for a Nusas conference in 1970s Cape Town. But, cautioned Sioipis, his influence on art students is overstated, at least locally.“Some art students got off on him but it was the philosophy students who were real addicts, from what I remember.” ..