Caitlin Ruttle
After seeing the LA studio where Bob Dylan paints, Richard Prince remarked “It didn’t look like any artist’s studio I’d ever been in. . . . It was like Dylan was painting in a witness protection program.” Dylan isn’t the only music icon known to trade the recording studio for an art studio. Iggy Pop paints in a clapboard house in Miami’s Little Haiti, and Michael Stipe is a committed sculptor and photographer (he also seems to have transformed michaelstipe.com into some sort of net art collage). Legendary blues experimentalist Captain Beefheart, wary of being dismissed as a dabbler, left music, his Magic Band, and his stage name for a successful art career as Don van Vliet.
After visiting rocker Patti Smith’s photography exhibition earlier this week, we’re looking into the visual art careers of a few more familiar names: Sonic Youth’s Kim Gordon, David Byrne of Talking Heads, Lizzi Bougatsos of Gang Gang Dance, and Moby. From New Wave to No Wave and electronica, these icons have been making visual art even while touring behind genre-defying music.
Kim Gordon, Untitled, 2008, watercolor on paper. Courtesy of the artist and KS Gallery.
Though she is know better known for her contributions to music, Kim Gordon was researching an art project when she became immersed in New York’s punk rock scene. After graduating from the Otis Art Institute and playing short stints with punk bands, Gordon met her future bandmate and husband, Thurston Moore, in 1981. Together they founded Sonic Youth, the influential band that, arguably, laid the foundation for genres like “alternative” and “indie” rock. While forming Sonic Youth, Gordon was writing for Artforum and working at SoHo art galleries. In 1982, she curated an exhibition at White Columns that included artists Mike Kelley and Tony Oursler, both of whom became future collaborators.
Since then, Gordon has also collaborated with artists including Dan Graham, Raymond Pettibon, and Richard Prince, exhibiting in Europe, Japan, and the United States. As part of Her Noise at the Tate Modern and South London Gallery, Gordon worked with artist Jutta Koether on an installation that allowed visitors to record their own accompaniment to Gordon’s pre-recorded vocal track. Gordon has released a portfolio of drawings, paintings, and installations titled Kim Gordon: Chronicles Vol. 2. Her latest artist’s book, Performing/Guzzling, returns to her music career and reflects on the experience of performing on stage.
David Byrne, Playing the Building, 2008, Installation view. Courtesy of the artist and Creative Time.
After graduating from Rhode Island School of Art and Design, David Byrne formed a band called The Artistics with a few other art school alumni. By 1975 they were known as Talking Heads, becoming one of the most critically acclaimed bands of the ‘80s. After Talking Heads disbanded in 1991, Byrne focused on his artwork, which humorously references corporate campuses, politicians, evolutionary trees, chairs, and better living through chemistry. In 1995 alone Byrne had ten solo shows from Istanbul to Atlanta, and he hasn’t tired since then. At his 2008 Creative Time project Playing the Building, visitors could play an organ hooked up to a 9,000-square-foot downtown building, vibrating beams, blowing through pipes, and striking girders. Byrne is represented in New York by Pace/MacGill and was recently included in a group show about Social Media at The Pace Gallery. Watch Artlog’s Social Media panel discussion with David Byrne here.
Lizzi Bougatsos, Untitled, 2007, Found poster, ceramic, wire. Courtesy of the artist and James Fuentes LLC.
Lizzi Bougatsos is the vocalist fronting Gang Gang Dance’s storm of electronics and percussion, and, not unlike her band’s music, she describes her multifaceted lifestyle as “organized chaos." Prior to the formation of Gang Gang Dance, Klaus Biesenbach had already selected Bougatsos for inclusion in a group show at MoMA PS1. The year the band released its debut album, Bougatsos won a 2004 Rema Hort Mann Foundation Visual Art Grant, and she continued to exhibit steadily as her band rose to critical prominence. Now represented by James Fuentes, Bougatsos has also exhibited at Gavin Brown, at Terrence Koh’s Asia Song Society, at Elizabeth Dee, and with Kim Gordon at Reena Spaulings. Though Bougatsos is open about the challenges of maintaining an art career while touring internationally, the two came together in 2008 when Gang Gang Dance performed at The Whitney Biennial. For her solo show last year at James Fuentes, she exhibited playful, often humorous, pieces incorporating found objects – something of contrast with the more haunting tones of her band’s latest album.
Moby, Destroyed, 2011, Photograph. Courtesy of the artist.
Widely known for his unassuming persona and political activism, electronica musician and DJ Moby was initially embraced as a club artist until the release of his hit single “Play” in 2000, which launched an immensely successful pop career. Though he has performed alongside Outkast, New Order, and U2, he describes having mixed feelings of surprise and appreciation towards his fame.
Long before he was a musician, Moby was a dedicated photographer spending days in the dark room. He kept the camera with him as his music career took off and has now begun to offer up photographs meditating on the conditions of a star DJ: the empty hotel rooms, desolate waiting rooms, and then, suddenly, the roar of a crowd. Moby exhibited his photographs for the first time this year at Clic Gallery in New York and Kopeikin Gallery in Los Angeles, accompanying the dual release of a photographic memoir of life on the road and a new album, both titled Destroyed. In our video interview in his New York apartment and studio, Moby discusses his lifelong love of photography, as well as his initial concerns about exhibiting his photography, concerns which were finally assuaged by his artist friends Will Cotton and Damian Loeb.
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