Portret artysty (rocka) w wieku dojrzałym Nick Cave na scenie
A Portrait of a (Rock) Artist as a Mature Man. Nick Cave on Stage

Summary/Abstract: In this article, I try to reconstruct the “representable self-image” of musician, writer and stage artist Nick Cave. I focus on his photographic portraits, the most emblematic and frequently reproduced, that create an iconosphere of rock and popular culture at the edge of the 20th and 21st centuries – taken by a Dutch photographer Anton Corbijn. However, I take under consideration not only photographic representations of Cave but also his latest output: music albums and the autobiographical movies 20 000 Days on Earth and One More Time with Feeling, as well as his poetry book called Sick Bag Song or his blog The Red Hand Files. All these hypertexts have been directed to give the audience a sense of participation in a metamorphosis, as they accompany the artist backstage, on tour, and in his hotel room. They show us how the “private” and “biological” body of the artist transfers into the “public” body, how it is monumentalized on stage and with a camera and – finally – how it becomes a “sign,” “trademark,” and “product.” Sometimes, this dialectic intimacy makes an impression of an exhibitionist-voyeuristic pact between the artist and his public. However, Cave runs this identity game very consciously and with self-irony. By crossing the borders between his mythologized stage effigie and his biography, Cave seems to adapt a Warhol-like politics of “giving good face” into the synoptical culture industry and fame culture of the 21st century.

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