Kim Gordon Was Always an Artist First

0:02I guess now I feel like I have the art career that's, or art practice rather, that suits me. You know, it's not conventional.

0:21Kim Gordon:I'm Kate Brown, and this is The Art Angle, a podcast from Artnet News.

0:34Kim Gordon:Kim Gordon, artist, musician, filmmaker, writer, and co-founder of the iconic rock band Sonic Use, is one of the most restlessly creative figures in American culture. Over the past four decades, Gordon's established herself as a singular voice, and she has moved between mediums with an ease that few can achieve. She published her memoir, Girl in a Band, in 2015 to wide acclaim. Her visual work has been shown at institutions including the Andy Warhol Museum, the Irish Museum of Modern Art, and the Busan Biennial. And her 2024 album, The Collective, earned her two Grammy nominations. It's a record built on trap beats and sharp cultural commentary.

1:09Kim Gordon:She was 71. But Gordon's always identified as an artist's first. She's a subject of two concurrent exhibitions opening this month at the arts organization Amant in Brooklyn. The first is her solo survey called Count Your Chickens, which brings together paintings, ceramics, film, and ready-made, spanning nearly 20 years of work. The second is called Folded Group, and it's a group show she co-curated with Bill Nace, her collaborator in the experimental guitar duo Bodyhead. Folded Group features 19 artist-musicians who, like Gordon, have never really accepted the boundary between making art and making music.

1:43Kim Gordon:Her third solo album, Play Me, is also dropping, and it's a work of art unto itself. And on top of that, she's about to head out on tour. Gordon joins me to discuss her artwork, her feelings about the art world and the music world, and where these universes diverge and what they share. We talk about album art and how the internet has changed what it means to make and disseminate visual work. Gordon also shares what it is meant to spend a career on the edge of every category and genre that people have tried to put her in. Hey Kim, how's it going? It's so nice to have you on the show. Thanks for having me.

2:15Kim Gordon:I'm such a great fan of yours So it's truly a pleasure to be able to talk to you today Where am I finding you right now? I'm in Los Angeles In my house And you must be deep in the middle of getting everything lined up For not only one solo show But a group show And then your album launch How are you managing with three big projects simultaneously? Yeah, it's very busy I mean, I'm also rehearsing to go on tour Learning the new songs And yeah, so after I come back from the opening and the installation, I'm jumping right back into rehearsal. Right. And your tour starts in April. Is that right? Yeah.

2:55The first show is here April 2nd. And then we fly to Europe April 9th. It's just a 10-day tour, but it's just loading the songs.

3:05Kim Gordon:Yeah, for sure. It's an intense schedule. Well, I love the new album. I was listening to it. it's really a diverse array of things. But we're going to talk about that a little bit today and about the two shows. But first, I wanted to just ask you, you know, I'm curious, given the multitude of fronts in your practice, like what is a day in your studio? Like where do you like to work? Or how do you alternate between things? Well, I only go to my studio if I'm working on visual art, which actually I haven't been to my studio working in quite a while because of the record. And yeah, the work for Amon's been done for a while.

3:45So, you know, it just depends on what's going on, you know, deadline wise or, yeah.

3:52Kim Gordon:So you often have said in other interviews and, you know, also in your memoir, Girl in a Band, that you never really thought of yourself as a musician specifically, but as an artist who also makes music. And I always really appreciated the way you rejected being pigeonholed into a category of creative pursuit or even a genre. I was listening to another interview with you and someone had said to you, you're like a genre unto yourself. And I really agree with that statement. And, you know, I was thinking about the group show Folded Group and how it brings together artists who akin to you have practices that live in more than one world simultaneously, simultaneously, and that they seem to come out of the same sensibility as you have in your practice.

4:36Kim Gordon:And so, you know, I wondered about that. Like, is that part of what drew you to curating this exhibition? You know, being around artists for whom that division between, as it says, like stage and studio is not so strict? I guess so. I don't know. I just thought it would be a nice adjunct to the show. Bill Nace, who's my partner in this, and also in the improv duo, we have Bodyhead. Yeah, I've seen him like, you know, over the years making drawings and, you know, and there's actually just the whole, like for a lot of the musicians in the show who are primarily musicians, like making posters and ephemera on all that is also like a kind of a huge sort of almost subculture of art making, I suppose, and music making.

5:28But I don't know, I just thought it would be kind of, you know, cool.

5:34Kim Gordon:And then you are also in this solo exhibition that's titled Count Your Chickens. And, you know, you described it in the press text as being about how intimacy and the private experience come out into a public address. And that's really struck me because you have said in other forums that, you know, you're quite shy. and that feels like there's a thread and that I've sort of detected observing and enjoying your work over the years that you sort of have always had to deal with this private and public self and you know you have described yourself as I just said as shy and sensitive and it made me wonder is it easier to stand on a stage behind your guitar you know in the noise and as the sort of live setting than it is to stand at an opening in front of your artworks or are they different experiences fundamentally as an artist?

6:25Yeah, sure. Of course. When you have an art show, it's like the work's kind of stylin' or something. But I don't know. I mean, I also just mean I'm interested in how advertising uses the idea of intimacy as ad copy. It's not per se about myself being a shy person. And it's just an interest in like how privacy functions and is used in the public sphere.

7:01Kim Gordon:Can you expand on the idea of intimacy in ad copy? Oh, I don't know. It's just like, you know, you can be walking off an airplane down one of those, you know, the walkway. And there'll be ads and there'll be an ad that has a line that's like abstract poetry. it's implying like some intimate moment and it's an ad for travel or, you know, something. When I first had a band with these two girls in 1980, I used to make up lyrics from a magazine ad copy. So I've always actually had that interest, I guess. I just think it's funny, you know, like how like something can read as both a line of abstract poetry and an advertisement.

7:51Kim Gordon:In your solo exhibition, you have this film work, Janetta and Alex, that also deals with intimacy quite directly. Well, yeah. I mean, it's a film of two people with guitars who never met each other, who never played guitar, who kind of meet in the middle of the space. And they kind of get sounds from the guitars by bumping into each other and kind of interacting. physically and it seems very intimate and there is something actually very intimate about making music with somebody because there is a certain amount of trust but like on the one hand it's a way of making a sound piece you know with a different set of instructions but yeah it does seem like it's intimate I don't even think there's any sexual tension between them I think it's like some awkwardness, but it's kind of interesting because you can look at it, you know, you can experience what they're experiencing in a way just visually and orally.

9:04Kim Gordon:So it's about an intimacy as vulnerability more so than any kind of eroticism. Yeah, kind of, yeah. But some people might look at it and say, oh, that's guitar sex, you know, because there is something inherent about the guitar that's, you know, phallic and electricity. movement affects the sounds you get with the guitar plugged in to an amplifier having electrical aspects and the way you turn your body can affect it and different things so it's very visceral it's very physical so it's a question of like what is beyond that physical you still don't really know what they're feeling you know you don't really know what's going on And then are they actually performing or are they just being real in the moment?

10:01And in Folded Group, there is a selection of musicians and also artists who circulate via, and I really liked this framing, like through scenes rather than institutions.

10:12Kim Gordon:And it made me think about, you know, the early album art that you were organizing via Sonic Youth and treating the record sleeve as a curatorial statement and also, you know, a representation of, from what I understand, was your community. And I thought maybe we could pan back to that time because I think there's like a nice thread between these two things. And just to name some examples for listeners, you know, you included the work of Mike Kelly, who features on the 1992 album Dirty, who was not the star that he is today, and nor was Gerhard Richter, whose work Kerze was on Daydream Nation in 1988.

10:45Kim Gordon:And, you know, I was wondering when you look back on that and that community as it was in that moment and, you know, those particular artists as examples, is it shocking how they rose and how the community has shifted since then at all? Well, I mean, I wouldn't exactly say Gerhard Richter was an obscure artist. I mean, he was having quite a career even then. And so was Mike, you know, in a way. I mean, we always thought in terms of record albums and we still made vinyl, which is like a 12 by 12, 12 and a half scale. I mean, I always thought of them as kind of like sort of ready-mades, you know, like the Gerhard Richter candle paintings were actually like this kind of the same scale as a record cover.

11:36I don't know, it's just like another way to get to kind of put something out that's, you know, with Mike's work or Marty Weber, even Raymond, into the, not exactly mainstream, but, you know, mass production, just to give it more exposure. I mean, art, not just music, but there were communities of artists. It's just now everything is so commercial that, you know, it's different.

12:06Kim Gordon:Your new album artwork, Play Me, features a lower body shot with legs in these leather shorts and the words Play Me are scrawled on each of the thighs. How did you conceive of the artwork? I was kind of ripping off of the idea of women using their bodies in a sexual way. but being ironic about it or cute about it. And then, you know, reading articles by feminists or what they thought of it. So it was kind of that cross with like the Rolling Stone cover of Sticky Fingers, where it's just like a close-up of the crotch of jeans, you know, with the zipper, you know. Right, of course, that's a great reference, yeah.

12:48Anyway, that was just where it started, basically. And because of the title, Play Me, it seems like to fit it. But I wanted it also not to be slick. I wanted to have some kind of raw aspect to it, like a horror movie or something.

13:10Kim Gordon:The album cover was one very important surface with which you could communicate the music to someone before they've had the chance to put it on. And nowadays, you have multiple social media platforms. There's so many different surfaces on which you need to communicate with your audience of parts of your practice. I wonder how you think through social media in particular. And, you know, and I want to come later to talking about tech as well, because I know that it figures into your practice and your music. But just from this perspective of being a public person, there's so many more places in which you have to like deal with that publicness.

13:47I don't know. I don't really think about social media that much. There are people at my management that think about the clip that they're going to use for the video when they show it to me. And the thing is, it's frustrating for me because of copyright questions. You can't show a whole video. So you have to put a link up. I mean, I don't go on TikTok. So basically, I just go on Instagram and I don't really go on X. I mean, they post stuff for me on the alternative to X. Is it Blue Sky? I think. Yeah, Blue Sky. But the thing is, is that there's no context for anything. And you can give context to things you put up, but people don't want to take the time to look at it.

14:36But like if you're listening to a song on a streaming platform, especially on Spotify, there's no information about that record. There's no context for anything, basically. You have to really search for context on the internet if you want to find out. Whereas before, I mean, it's true, the only thing you had was a record and a photo. But for some reason, that was really important. You would just try and garner as much information as you could from this one record sleeve. and the inner sleeve. And you can still project all kinds of things about the band just from looking at their photo. And if you're looking at holding something that's still, it's not moving, it's not going to disappear.

15:30Maybe this is just an old people's thing, but it just sort of stays with you longer. One image can stay with you. Whereas now there's so many images.

15:43Kim Gordon:For sure. And then things also tumble out of context in really surprising ways. And one of the tracks that you made, Bye Bye, which I think was a sample that was intended for a trap star, which you ended up doing a brilliant piece with, that went viral and became a meme and slipped through the algorithm. I was thinking about the intentionality with which you do so much of your work and whether that was a very surreal experience to see. I don't know if you paid attention, but there was all these innumerable clips. I didn't pay that much attention to it. I mean, I thought it was kind of funny and, you know, to be on TikTok and, you know, those kind of things like they don't last long.

16:22You know, that's like, I think it was a great song. Yeah, for sure.

16:27Kim Gordon:And it's just interesting because the album and also your work is often in places of criticism of tech. You draw out Spotify playlists in one of your songs and shopping lists and consumerism. And then in the show, Count Your Chickens, you're using this device and working with it in the form of an artwork, you know, the shape of the iPhone. So you seem to really want to create friction in the work and that slowness. But then, of course, it's almost like it's running up against a current that is just hard to swim against, if you know what I mean. I mean, isn't that the goal of art? To make you think about things.

17:08You know, tech has its uses to degrees. But I mean, my point is really just that people are really seduced by technology. You know, it's new, it's sexy. And the first impulse, even since the beginning of stylized Airstream looks in the mid-50s, it's supposed to bring about an improved life. It doesn't always do that. There's always like a, you give up something. But it's more than that now. I guess maybe since the 80s or maybe the 90s, it was like technology just moves so much faster. But, you know, even after World War I, I mean, people weren't like totally happy with the post-industrial life because they saw what it brought about in World War I.

18:03And then suddenly like everyone's working in factories and it's all about work. And, you know, I'm just sociologically interested in the relationship between this is what's going on in the landscape.

18:24Kim Gordon:I think with the younger generation right now, there is this rising disenchantment that wasn't there a few years ago. So maybe the tides will shift again. But you mentioned a few minutes ago, this idea of permanence of holding a record and it sort of being a static thing that is relatively stable over a period of time. And I was thinking about the liner notes that Yuta Kuta made for Daydream Nation. And she's also in the group show that you're opening. And I was wondering if you could talk a bit about that friendship, because that friendship seems to span decades, and you're still working together and collaborating, which I think is really fantastic.

19:07Actually, I don't think she wrote the liner notes because when I first met Yuta, we were on a press tour. Or maybe we were on tour, but she was working for Specs and she did an interview with us when Daydream Nation came out and she was kind of giving us a hard time about using such a bourgeois artist as Gerhard Rector. and um I said well I see it as like a Trojan horse you know it's like it looks one way on the outside but it's something else in the inside so that's basically how we met and then she moved to New York and we became friends at some point started doing art collaborations together you're

19:54Kim Gordon:right sorry I should say it was in the re-issue of Daydreamination that oh okay that makes more Because that makes more sense, of course. Yeah. And she, as you said, she had raised the question about Gerhard Lisch's work because he was already a star in Germany. And decades later, also, that painting sold for$16.6 million at an auction. And as someone who's also been in the art world this entire time, I wonder what you make of that, because that's quite a striking number by any measure. You know, art's crazy. I don't know. It's almost like gambling, you know. It is built on more than people just putting online bets on everything, you know, like are oil prices going to go up, you know, to such and such a number?

20:45And we feel a bet on is Trump going to wear a red hat or a white hat to the service? Art's a funny kind of capitalism. Takes it out of its original, I guess, use value, the whole marketing apart.

21:03Kim Gordon:Yeah. I was actually paid to talk about that painting for the auction house. How was that experience? um actually it was kind of painful actually questions the only thing that people hear about from the art world who are not in it is these incredible prices and there's so much more there which you know we both well know and it's frustrating that that's kind of how people understand it and it is different from music in that sense because and this is something that I've always found a little bit frustrating is that art, you get told, you know, that it's good and that you don't understand the canon and therefore you should appreciate this thing.

21:46Kim Gordon:And that's why it's worth so much. And with music, it's different. Like it either has a grip on people or it doesn't. And of course, there's lots of marketing that can create a cult of a personality, but a song can make someone cry and it probably does more regularly than a painting might. I wonder what you think about that. Or maybe you don't agree. As someone who's worked in both mediums, I wonder what you think about the sort of visceral experience of each of them. Well, you know, like art world, there are many different kinds of the music world, just as there are many different kinds of the art world.

22:21So I guess I just expect the music industry to be kind of horrible. You know, it's crass and it's like, how big is your marketing budget and pushing things. And I mean, art has emotionality too. It's just that it's not as accessible. And especially in America, I think people are more afraid of art. So it's not clear what they're supposed to get out of it. You know, with music, also, it is something that from a very, you know, young age, everyone listens to music. And when you're a teenager and in college, the music you listen to can be so formative and it can, you know, leave quite an impression.

23:20And art could do that, but not to that extent. But I remember as a teenager going to a show, I think it was called Art and Technology, ironically enough. And it had Warhol, had these printed shower curtains with also a whole row of shower heads. And there was this Bruce Nauman, his green hallway, way you know the narrow kind of yeah space he created that was like oh like that left such an impression on me I still think about that piece I don't know so I mean art really does have that but it's just you know I think if people were exposed to art in starting in like elementary school it would it would be different for sure and there is some merit to having to work to