BROOKLYN, NY.- In Iggy Pop Life Class, Turner Prize–winning artist Jeremy Deller uses the traditional life-model drawing class to stage a performative event with Iggy Pop as model and subject. The resulting drawings, created by twenty-two participating artists, is being shown at the Brooklyn Museum from November 4, 2016, to March 26, 2017. Along with works depicting the male body selected from the Museum’s historical collections, the exhibition examines shifting cultural representations of masculinity across history.

Deller’s collaboration with Iggy Pop as a nude model is essential to his concept. A pioneer rock musician—as a singer, songwriter, musician, and actor—Pop began performing in the 1960s, becoming known for strenuous and unpredictable stage performances—highly physical, deliberately aggressive events that often left his body battered and cut. These corporeally charged acts radically confronted the rock and roll trope of male sexual appeal. As Deller notes, “Iggy Pop has one of the most recognizable bodies in popular culture. A body that is key to an understanding of rock music, and that has been paraded, celebrated, and scrutinized through the years in a way that is unusual for a man. It is also fair to say that it has witnessed a lot. It was for these reasons that I wanted him to sit for a life class.” For Deller, the life drawing class offered the opportunity to study his body in direct and palpable terms.

On Sunday, February 21, 2016, the twenty-two participating artists gathered at the New York Academy of Art, where Pop was the unexpected model. The artists represent New York’s diverse community, ranging from 19 to 80 years of age with varying backgrounds, and include undergraduate and graduate students, practicing artists, and retirees. The life drawing class was led by artist and drawing professor Michael Grimaldi. The artists were selected by Deller and Sharon Matt Atkins, Vice Director, Exhibitions and Collections Management, Brooklyn Museum, from recommendations made by instructors at the Brooklyn Museum’s Gallery/Studio Program, the Art Students League of New York, Kingsborough Community College, the New York Academy of Art, and Pratt Institute. The artists are Jeremy Day, Jeanette Farrow, Margaret Fisher, Seiji Gailey, Robert Hagan, Tobias Hall, Deirdra Hazeley, Patricia Hill, Okim Woo Kim, Maureen McAllister, Kallyiah Merilus, Guno Park, Kinley Pleteau, Angel Ramirez, Robert Reid, Mauricio Rodriguez, Danielle Rubin, Taylor Schultek, Charlotte Segall, Andrew Shears, and Levan Songulashvili.

Iggy Pop Life Class expands on the ways in which different cultures have traditionally considered the male body by including objects from the Brooklyn Museum’s collection, chosen by Deller, that represent male figures from different cultures and periods around the world. Works include sculptures from ancient Egypt, Africa, India, Japan, and Mexico; prints and drawings by Egon Schiele, Max Beckmann, and Daniel Huntington; and photographs by Eadweard Muybridge, Horace Bristol, Jim Steinhardt, Robert Mapplethorpe, and John Coplans. “Pop’s use of his body in his performances, and Deller’s multifaceted approach to examining it through this project, offers the opportunity to discuss maleness, and to consider how feminism has expanded to apply not only to women, but to all genders on the spectrum,” said Sharon Matt Atkins.

London-based conceptual artist Jeremy Deller (English, born 1966) is known for orchestrating largescale collaborative projects. In 2001, Deller worked with former miners and members of reenactment societies to restage a violent confrontation between the police and striking miners that had occurred in 1984 during the yearlong miners’ strike in the United Kingdom. For It Is What It Is, commissioned by The Three M Project and Creative Time in 2009, Deller toured the United States with a car destroyed in a 2007 bomb attack in Baghdad, inviting journalists, Iraqi refugees, soldiers, and scholars to share their experiences. He has developed several music projects including Acid Brass (1997), a brass band performance of acid house music. More recently, he created Sacrilege (2012), a life-size inflatable Stonehenge, and we’re here because we’re here (2016), a modern memorial to mark the centenary of the Battle of the Somme. Winner of the 2004 Turner Prize, Deller represented Great Britain at the 55th Venice Biennale in 2013. His appreciation of academic drawing can be traced to his art history studies at the Courtauld Institute of Art and the University of Sussex.

A pioneer of rock music, Iggy Pop (American, born James Newell Osterberg, Jr., 1947) is a singersongwriter, musician, and actor. Born and raised in Michigan, Pop began performing in the 1960s. In 1967, he formed The Stooges, a band that significantly influenced the trajectory of rock music in the 1970s and 1980s. Pop became known for dynamic and unpredictable stage performances, a trademark throughout his career. His music has encompassed a number of styles over the decades, with well-known albums such as The Idiot (1977), Lust for Life (1977), Blah Blah Blah (1986), Brick by Brick (1990), and Skull Ring (2003). In 2010, The Stooges were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. March 2016 marked the release of Pop’s seventeenth album, Post Pop Depression, a collaboration with Josh Homme of Queens of the Stone Age.