Iggy Pop and artist Jeremy Deller have discussed their recent collaborative art project, which features nude life drawings of Pop himself.
The drawings are going on display at the Brooklyn museum in New York from November 4 until March 2017, all of which depict Pop naked.
Whilst the 69 year old singer has never been shy about getting his clothes off, he has told The Guardian he was initially hesitant to take part, saying that when he was approached about the project ten years ago.
“I was a little too young, I thought I didn’t have the weight. Now I feel like a lot has happened with and to my body. For some reason, it felt important for me to just stand naked for a group of human beings”.
When he did finally agree to model for the artists, who ranged in age from teenagers to people in their 80s, Iggy was a natural.
“Even models who have been doing life drawing for years don’t quite know how to pose to best express themselves,” said Guno Park, one of the artists. “But Iggy was so natural and comfortable. He would naturally go towards the contrapostal pose of Michelangelo’s David.”
Robert Hagen, 82, said he didn’t really know who the musician was: “I thought Iggy was an alter ego of David Bowie”.
#Iggy #Pop poses for nude drawing class [NSFW] https://t.co/VStVv26MLX pic.twitter.com/h16W6vcFk1
— George A. Rauscher (@law_forensic) September 29, 2016
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Check out nude drawings of Iggy Pop from The Brooklyn Museum's 'Life Class:' https://t.co/p1dBqftyL5 pic.twitter.com/mH0tBYCaOf
— BULLETT Media (@BULLETTMedia) September 29, 2016
Turner Prize winner Deller said of Pop: “He plays his body. The way he manipulates it, damages it, bends it and flaunts it has become his way of communicating. His body interprets the music but it’s also playing its own tune.”
“There are hundreds of thousands of photographs of him,” Deller added, “but very few drawings. I thought his body deserves to be looked at differently, to be taken more seriously, in a way that would connect him to art history.”
Deller went on to say that Iggy reminded him of a mischievous wood sprite: “They caused a nuisance and ran around half-naked with erections, looking for women and booze and fun. That’s what Iggy actually is: an ancient, mythological figure, but in contemporary form.”