![]() ‘Even though his body has been photographed and reproduced in print millions of times I felt it could only be properly understood and appreciated by being drawn – the process in which you give the subject the attention it deserves’, he explains in an exhibition catalogue.Īnd being faithful to his beliefs he approached the Brooklyn Museum in New York to organize a life class with Iggy Pop as a model. Why particularly by drawing? The recipient of the Turner Prize believes that the best way to understand something is to study it. ‘His body has witnessed much and should be documented’, noted Deller. Throughout his career he has been well known not only for his music (such hits as The Passenger, Lust For Life or Kill City), but also for the image of his naked torso. Iggy Pop is one of the most recognizable personas in popular culture. ‘Flipping through photographs of performances from San Francisco to Amsterdam, 1970 to 2016, Pop maintains an impossibly fresh-from-the-gym physique.’ He ‘is peacocking Michelangelo-worthy abs’ reads the article titled ‘Iggy Pop Holds the Secret to Maintaining Ageless Abs Forever’ in the American edition of Vogue.2 It is not surprising then that his muscular, pliable body has become a graceful subject for a life class study. Weirdly enough, forty-five years later – when he posed for a group of artists for the Jeremy Deller’s project of the Brooklyn Museum - his now 69 years-old body looks almost exactly the same. ![]() I think I have achieved this in my naked Iggy Pop portrait.’1 Malanga’s photograph from 1971 has become one of the iconic images of Pop. A truly successful picture, I hope, would go beyond that. In that instance, the viewer's mind blocks out all else and only leaves the residue of fame. Those faces are not at all self-conscious, and so reveal so much more than what a famous face might try to hide or disguise. The latter said in an interview for Dazed magazine: ‘What is fun for me, though, is photographing someone who is not famous at all. And because it was New York City, not his hometown (a working-class area of Detroit), he happened to model for famous photographers, such as Bill King working for Vogue, or Richard Bernstein and Gerard Malanga from the Warhol Factory. When iconic rock musician Iggy Pop, like many other future music stars, went to New York as a young man in order to make some money, he posed a few times in the nude. Jeremy Deller: ‘Even though Iggy Pop's body has been photographed and reproduced in print millions of times I felt it could only be properly understood and appreciated by being drawn – the process in which you give the subject the attention it deserves.’
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