Iggy Pop‘s body zigs where it should zag. A lifetime of hard-as-hell living has left the constantly shirtless punk icon with a torso that’s simultaneously ripped and saggy and veiny arms that can serve as examples of fractals in nature. And now that body has been officially deemed high art via an exhibition of nude drawings of the Stooges frontman that will run at the Brooklyn Museum from November 4 to March 26.
According to Dazed Digital, “Iggy Pop Life Class” will display the work of 21 artists who were selected to immortalize Pop’s naked form. The conceit of the collection seems to be an examination of the toll that a life like Iggy’s takes on a person’s body.
“It wasn’t about my winkie, or anything,” Pop told Entertainment Weekly earlier this year. “It was just a documentation of what’s left of me. It’s not the sort of thing I’m going to start doing as a weekend job. I did it once at the start of my career, I was photographed also without clothes by Bill King and Gerard Malanga from the Warhol Factory, so it was time.”
Jeremy Deller, the brains behind Life Class, said something similar when news broke about his idea.
“His body has witnessed much and should be documented,” Deller explained. “It’s central to an understanding of rock music and its place within American culture.”
The Life Class drawings will be collected into a book of the same name and curious readers can view a few of them here.
