Kim Gordon Releases New Book 'No Icon'

by SHOWstudio on 15 October 2020

In a follow-up to her 2015 autobiography Girl in a Band: A Memoir, the 90s style icon has compiled a hardcover visual scrapbook of her life.

In a follow-up to her 2015 autobiography Girl in a Band: A Memoir, the 90s style icon has compiled a hardcover visual scrapbook of her life.

Kim Gordon has released a new hardcover scrapbook, Kim Gordon: No Icon, detailing the American musician's life through a series of photographs, fashion editorials, artwork, lyrics, writing and more personal ephemera. Gordon is best-known for her role as bassist, guitarist and vocalist in legendary alternative rock band Sonic Youth, formed in 1981 in New York.

Gordon's critically acclaimed autobiography Girl in a Band: A Memoir (2015) detailed the lost New York of the 1980s and 90s which proved fertile breeding ground for Sonic Youth and the wider alternative music scene. Kim Gordon: No Icon can be read as a visual consolidation of Girl in a Band: A Memoir, spanning Gordon's childhood in 1960s California through to New York's downtown art and music scene, in which the singer was was thoroughly entrenched.

Image courtesy of Rizzoli
Image courtesy of Rizzoli

Gordon has a strong background in visual art, having had solo shows at the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh and the Irish Museum of Modern Art in Dublin showcasing her multidisciplinary work. In her Sonic Youth days, Gordon was responsible for the choice to use a Gerhard Richter painting as the album cover for Daydream Nation (1989).

Following the break up of Sonic Youth in 2011, Gordon released her first ever solo album No Home Record last year with producer Justin Raisen after the pair met by chance in an Airbnb. In 2005, Gordon collaborated with fellow New York musician Jutta Koether to create an alternative musical experience termed as 'reverse karaoke' for SHOWstudio's Transmissions project.

Kim Gordon: No Icon is available to buy from Rizzoli.

Image courtesy of Rizzoli
Image courtesy of Rizzoli
Image courtesy of Rizzoli
TRANSMISSIONS: Kim Gordon & Jutta Koether (2005)

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