Kurt Cobain with Courtney Love and Frances Bean Cobain. Photography by Ron Galella
Kurt Cobain was not only a grunge legend and frontman of one of the 90s greatest bands–Nirvana– was also a visual artist and during his lifetime he accomplished a number of paintings and created the artwork for albums including “In Utero”. These works and other of private possessions from Cobain’s estate are now set to go a tour but not without the controversy that usually surrounds any news on the artist since his death.
Last October, the announcement of a posthumous Cobain’s album release was met with harsh criticism and moralistic outcries on the web. So this time around, Jeff Jampol, the one man who knows how to navigate these sort of pitfalls, is on the case. Jeff Jampol who already manages the estates of dead musicians including Otis Redding and Janis Joplin, has revealed in an interview with the New York Times that Cobain’s archive is his next big project.
“[Cobain’s] got some amazing canvases that a lot of the world has never seen or even heard of,” Jambol told the Times. Details of the upcoming exhibition are yet to be unveiled but Cobain’s widow, Courtney Love, and their child, Frances Bean Cobain are both involved. The latter is responsible for her father’s estate and was also co-executive producer of the last year’s controversial documentary “Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck”, which already features various of the music legend’s original collages and sketches. Many of Cobain’s personal items have been crossed of the estate’s list of private assets since his death in 1994. Those included everything from his journals to his cardigans but for any die-hard fans who might raise their brows at the Cobain familiy’s proceedings, Jampol reminds us that Cobain’s artistic legacy is “going to be relevant for centuries.”
For anyone who can’t wait for the upcoming exhibition there’s also a show on Cobain and his life at Seattle’s EMP Museum show, “Nirvana: Taking Punk to the Masses“