Artist Wants To Smoke Cobain

09/30/08 1:43pm

by Kate Harper (CHARTattack)

Back in June, Courtney Love told British tabloid News Of The World that some of the ashes of her late husband and Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain had been stolen from her Hollywood home. Love might want to have a word with Australian artist Natascha Stellmach, who claims to have Cobain's ashes... and she's gonna smoke 'em.

We're pretty sure you shouldn't smoke a dead guy for general health reasons, and the idea is also just creepy and possibly as weird and gross as necrophilia. Nonetheless, Stellmach says she plans to do just that when she rolls itty bitty pieces of Cobain into a joint, lights them up and inhales.

Stellmach won't reveal how she acquired Cobain's ashes, and only told Art World magazine, "That's confidential and kind of magic. They came to me."

We're pretty sure ashes don't have legs, which means they couldn't come to her, but anyway.

Before Stellmach smokes Cobain, she'll use his ashes in a five-piece "death cycle" art installation that examines suicide. In the work, Stellmach narrates a "suicide contemplation" and also includes a text where Cobain, Adolf Hitler, Diane Arbus (all of whom committed suicide) and The Brothers Grimm meet in "a twilight zone." There are two more segments before the final one, Gone, in which Stellmach presents the joint which contains Cobain's ashes.

All this makes us think Love should probably reconsider placing ads on her MySpace page in search of a housekeeper.

In oddly related news, Frances Bean Cobain, Cobain and Love's daughter, reportedly held a sweet 16 birthday party in the summer, and the theme was suicide. Love is said to have spent $323,000 U.S. (about $333,000 Canadian) on the bash, for which her daughter sent this invitation out:

"My one and only sweet 16 . .. eerrrr actually it's my suicidal 16. .. We are also having a contest, it's the 'who can look most dead contest.' If you dress up dead and are picked as the top three, you will receive an iPod Touch and a $200 gift certificate to Amoeba. So get that face paint on, and try to make it as realistic as you can."