2025-05-05
38 分钟This is The Guardian.
Welcome to The Guardian Long Read,
showcasing the best long-form journalism covering culture, politics and new thinking.
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From acid house to ancient rights.
Jeremy Deller's enormous, collaborative, unsellable art by Charlotte Higgins, read by Richard Coyle.
On a frosty, bright blue day in February 2024, Jeremy Deller was in Dundee examining severed heads.
How can anyone not be fascinated by a head, he said.
Deller is an elfin figure, five foot five on a good day.
a low-key, unintimidating presence.
The only giveaway to his identity as an artist was his slightly dandyish clothing.
A KLF T-shirt, a checked neckerchief, lemon-yellow socks,
and a purple Missoni sweater, which he hurriedly explained, lest he come across as too fancy.
He had bought on sale.
When he won the Turner Prize in 2004, he looked like a dapper schoolboy.
Twenty years on,
the only indication he was nearing 60 was the way he kept alternating a pair of reading glasses with his sunglasses,
toggling them between nose and forehead.
Deller, carrying himself more like a journalist than most people's idea of an artist,
was questioning Dr Tobias Holton, a forensic anthropologist from the University of Dundee.