- One bewigged self-portrait from 1996, by Jeffry Mitchell, painted in honor of (among others) Kurt Cobain.
He only exhibited it once, that year, at Kate Elliott's gallery in Fremont (in a location that has since been buried under a new apartment tower). Linda Farris, the late great Seattle contemporary art collector, bought it, and she left it to her friend Judy Tobin when she died. When Mitchell heard Seattle Art Museum curator Michael Darling was organizing a Kurt exhibition, Mitchell told Darling about his painting, and the curator borrowed it for the exhibition, where it now hangs next to a tiny photograph by Douglas Gordon. It is the only work Mitchell ever made about Kurt Cobain (he was here during the Nirvana years but didn't know Kurt), and one of the few paintings Mitchell has ever made, period.
- Another bewigged self-portrait from 1996, by Douglas Gordon, taken in honor of (among others) Kurt Cobain.
The same year Mitchell made his homage to Kurt, Scottish artist Douglas Gordon made a Cobain self-portrait that has become pretty famous—it, likewise, is a collapsing of identities one into the other, this time using photo-booth quickie photography to complete the pseudo-channeling.
Its title, uncannily, is Self-Portrait as Kurt Cobain, as Andy Warhol, as Myra Hindley, as Marilyn Monroe. Something about Kurt Cobain made people want to dress up as themselves as someone else.
In Kurt, the two works hang side by side.