Pop Culture Artifacts and Memorabilia Set To Become a Major Niche in the NFT Marketplace
New York City, New York Mar 19, 2021 (Issuewire.com) - A digital scan of a letter written by Iggy Pop is up for auction as an NFT on the popular site Mintable.
In the Fall of 1993, Iggy Pop was on tour in Europe in support of his tenth studio album, titled American Caesar. In the liner notes, he shared personal stories of heartbreak and pain as background for the album's lyrics. He went on to invite readers to write to him with their own stories, promising to read them all, answering those he could, and listed address care of his record label, Richard Branson's Virgin.
On a crisp November evening in the north of France, Mr. Pop asked the waiter if he could get some paper to write on, and a pen. On the restaurant's stationary Iggy penned a heartfelt letter to a fan who had answered the call, one James Barker, who himself had a minor role in punk rock history as the founder of the Memphis night club Antenna (1981). Mr. Barker had written Iggy informing him of the death of a mutual acquaintance, Melody Danielson, who had been a muse and frequent subject of famed photographer Robert Mapplethorpe in New York City during the art boom of the 1980s. Mapplethorpe hailed from Detroit, Michigan, and his hometown circle of freakish friends included Iggy and Patti Smith, whose breakout album, Horses, displayed a Mapplethorpe portrait of Smith on the cover.
In the summer of 1993, Mr. Barker had moved to Paris, France. Soon after he phoned Melody to invite her to visit him there and together go see Iggy in concert at the Paris venue Le Zénith. That's when she told him of her terminal cancer diagnosis, and that she was too ill to travel. On reading Iggy's album liner invitation, he knew that he had to write, not really expecting to hear anything back. He just wanted to do it for Melody.
The original letter was lost when Barker moved overseas again years later, leaving it in a storage unit that was liquidated without his consent. The digital scan of the letter was made in 2010 for inclusion in a feature film about the Antenna, which went on to win several awards on the film festival circuit. The film was never enjoyed a theatrical release, but a few trailers and excerpts can be found on YouTube. Several hyperlinks containing footage that includes images of Melody are embedded in the item description on Mintable.
The letter has a starting bid of just under a thousand dollars at the time of this writing. Net proceeds from the sale will go to The Mapplethorpe Foundation and the American Cancer Society.
Photo of Melody Danielson Copyright The Mapplethorpe Foundation
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Source :Mintable
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