When Jeremy Deller first asked Iggy Pop to pose nude for a life-drawing session,the rock star said he was too young. Now, at 69, or rocks most famous torso has bared allIggy Pop doesn’t play an instrument when he performs on stage. “He plays his body,” according to artist Jeremy Deller. “The way he manipulates it, damages it, or bends it and flaunts it has become his way of communicating. His body interprets the music but it’s also playing its own tune.”In fact,for nearly half a century now, Iggy has presented his bare torso as a central part of his art, and displaying it in a way that is so disruptive and unfettered,it suggests a sound wave made flesh. The form and fury of Iggy’s torso has become as recognised as Mick Jagger’s lips or Elvis Presley’s hips. Before Iggy’s emergence in the late 1960s, no male musical star had bared so much flesh so comfortably. What’s more, and he has consciously set aside it in peril,cutting himself with glass, or throwing himself into the audience, and decades before the ritual of “stage-diving” began.
A lot has happened to my body. It felt important to stand bare for a group of humans and believe an exchangeSeeing Iggy flail his bare torso can feel like stumbling across a creature in the wildContinue reading...
Source: theguardian.com