Diego Cortez, a scene shaper in art and music, dies at 74

The First Art Newspaper on the Net    Established in 1996 Friday, March 29, 2024


Diego Cortez, a scene shaper in art and music, dies at 74
Diego Cortez recruited more than 100 artists for “New York/New Wave,” a 1981 show at what is now the exhibition space MoMA PS 1 in Queens. Cortez, an influential figure in New York City’s Downtown art and music scenes who in 1981 curated a massive exhibition featuring dozens of artists that brought the 20-year-old Jean-Michel Basquiat to public renown, died on Monday, June 21, 2021, in Burlington, N.C. He was 74. MoMA PS1 Archives via The New York Times.

by Richard Sandomir



NEW YORK (NYT NEWS SERVICE).- Diego Cortez, an influential figure in New York City’s downtown art and music scenes who in 1981 curated a massive exhibition featuring dozens of artists that brought then-20-year-old Jean-Michel Basquiat to public renown, died Monday in Burlington, North Carolina. He was 74.

The cause was kidney failure, his sister Kathy Hudson said. He died in hospice care at her house but had been living nearby in Saxapahaw.

Cortez seemed to be everywhere in SoHo, Tribeca and beyond in the late 1970s and early ’80s. He co-founded the Mudd Club, a gritty, boundary-pushing nightclub that opened in 1978. He performed with Laurie Anderson and Kathy Acker; directed music videos for Blondie and the Talking Heads; mounted shows of drawings and photographs by rock singer-songwriter Patti Smith; and wrote “Private Elvis,” a book with photographs of Presley’s time in the Army that Cortez found in West Germany.

Then came the “New York/New Wave” show in 1981. Held at the cutting-edge P.S. 1 Contemporary Art Center (now MoMA PS1) in Long Island City, Queens, the exhibition demonstrated Cortez’s eclectic knowledge of the visual and musical worlds in which he had been immersed since he moved to New York City.

He recruited more than 100 artists for the show, among them Acker, Robert Mapplethorpe, Nan Goldin, Keith Haring, Andy Warhol, David Byrne, William Burroughs, Futura 2000, Ann Magnuson, Fab 5 Freddy and Basquiat, whom he had met on the dance floor of the Mudd Club.

“It was huge — literally 600 to 700 works of art that took three weeks to install, using two installation crews,” P.S. 1 founder Alana Heiss said by phone. “He was very persuasive: We started with one group of galleries on the first floor and ended up on two floors.”

“Diego was full of unquenchable passion,” she said.

Curt Hoppe, a photorealist painter whose work was in the exhibition, recalled: “He brought uptown and downtown together, graffiti and downtown artists, and he hung it in an unusual way, splattering everything on the walls. It was a riveting show.”

He added: “Diego was the epitome of cool.”

In a maximalist show that Cortez packed with existing and future stars, Basquiat was introduced to a wider world. Known first for his graffiti art, Basquiat had morphed into a painter who incorporated images of angular people and symbols with words and phrases. The show, for which Basquiat created about 20 new works, brought him to the attention of dealers. By the time he died in 1988 at 27, he was a superstar.

“What makes this work is the intensity of the line,” Cortez said in 2017 when the Basquiat portion of “New York/New Wave” was partly restaged at the Barbican Art Gallery in London. “Jean-Michel was really more of a drawer. It keeps that innocent aspect, that childish aspect that’s important, because it’s slightly not adult.”

Cortez remained linked to Basquiat long after the P.S. 1 exhibition. He curated a few more shows of his work; advised his estate and served on its authentication committee; acted as a consultant to Julian Schnabel when Schnabel made the film “Basquiat” (1996); and played a bit part as what the credits called a “fist-fighter at the Mudd Club” in “Downtown 81” (2001), another film about Basquiat.

James Allan Curtis was born Sept. 30, 1946, in Geneva, Illinois, and grew up nearby in Wheaton. His father, Allan, was a warehouse manager for a steel company, and his mother, Jean (Ham) Curtis, was a manicurist.




After graduating from Illinois State University with a bachelor’s degree, he earned a master’s degree in 1973 at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where he studied film, video and performance art. His teachers included avant-garde filmmaker Stan Brakhage and video artist Nam June Paik.

He changed his name to Diego Cortez before moving to New York City in 1973, adopting it as an artistic pseudonym and as a reflection of the Hispanic neighborhood in Chicago where he had lived.

Once in New York, he worked as a studio assistant to conceptual artist Dennis Oppenheim and then to video and performance artist Vito Acconci. Over the next few years, as he became further enmeshed in the downtown music and art worlds, he held a variety of jobs, including one as a security guard at the Museum of Modern Art. The job inspired Anderson in 1977 to release “Time to Go (For Diego),” a song that tells how Cortez, working the late shift, would tell people when it was time to leave:

Or, as he put it, snap them out of their … art trances.

People who had been standing in front of one thing for hours.

He would jump in front of them and snap his fingers.

And he’d say, “Time to go.”

Cortez’s career after “New York/New Wave” was multifaceted, but he never organized another enormous exhibition like that one. He was an occasional agent and curator; collaborated on projects with his friend Brian Eno, an innovative musician and producer; and served as an art adviser to the Luciano Benetton and Frederik Roos collections. He composed an album, “Traumdetung” (2014), a mix of music and his snoring. And at one point he tried, unsuccessfully, to start a museum in Puerto Rico.

“His main goal was to support artists by having collectors buy their work or to get their work into museums,” said his sister, who organized exhibitions with her brother at the John Hope Franklin Center at Duke University, where she worked.

In addition to her, Cortez is survived by another sister, Carol Baum, and a brother, Daniel Curtis.

Smith, in a phone interview, said she first got to know Cortez in the 1970s. He later urged her to resume working on her visual art, which she had largely stopped pursuing during a long hiatus from public life.

“He was a bridge to helping me get my feet back on the ground,” she said.

He helped curate a show of her drawings and photos at the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh in 2002 and an exhibition of her photos in 2010 at the New Orleans Museum of Art, where he was the curator of photography at the time.

“He didn’t like to stand in other people’s light,” Smith said. “He wanted Basquiat to stand on his own. He wanted me to stand on my own at my exhibition in New Orleans. He was really interested in seeing people he thought had promise flower.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.










Today's News

June 26, 2021

Marco Tirelli, an Italian artist in London

World Wide Web source code is latest NFT for sale

How Basquiat and street artists left their mark on hip-hop culture

A space for cultivating creativity, 13 years in the making

Nigerian artists and entrepreneurs bank on crypto-art

Diego Cortez, a scene shaper in art and music, dies at 74

In France, virtual gallery showcases Leonardo's 'power and grace'

Los Angeles gets its own Gallery Weekend

A museum where every object helped a child endure war

David Bowie painting smashes auction record

'Prince Philip: A Celebration' display opens at Windsor Castle

Ballroom Marfa presents a series of new works by Donna Huanca

Exhibition honors a landmark American decorative arts bequest

Prince's handwritten lyrics for 'Nothing Compares 2 U' sold for $150,986 at auction

"The Painters of Pompeii" opens at The Oklahoma City Museum of Art

Black Cat clock brings CA$11,210 in Miller & Miller online auction

Michael Landy's 'Welcome to Essex' opens at Firstsite

Heritage Auctions first to top $900K in weekly Comics and Comic Art sales

Grove Square Galleries opens a solo exhibition by Zimbabwean artist Marc Standing

Ten contemporary artists explore the diverse cultures and people of New England

Nara Roesler opens a group exhibition curated by Raphael Fonseca

Hong Kong artists revive city's bygone era with miniatures

A Requiem, derailed by the pandemic, arrives when it's needed most

The Board of Trustees of the British Museum appoints George Osborne as their Chair

Current trends for your home garage door

Which Ring To Wear in What Finger as Per Astrology

Lil Sebastian Strain for Sweet Marijuana Lovers

Xigem Technologies Corporation On Remote Work

Top Rough Country Exterior Jeep Modifications

5 tips for maintaining a winning smile

Why Are Free Crypto Signals Important To Traders?

Top unusual and sophisticated hen-party ideas




Museums, Exhibits, Artists, Milestones, Digital Art, Architecture, Photography,
Photographers, Special Photos, Special Reports, Featured Stories, Auctions, Art Fairs,
Anecdotes, Art Quiz, Education, Mythology, 3D Images, Last Week, .

 



Founder:
Ignacio Villarreal
(1941 - 2019)
Editor & Publisher: Jose Villarreal
Art Director: Juan José Sepúlveda Ramírez

Royalville Communications, Inc
produces:

ignaciovillarreal.org juncodelavega.com facundocabral-elfinal.org
Founder's Site. Hommage
to a Mexican poet.
Hommage
       

The First Art Newspaper on the Net. The Best Versions Of Ave Maria Song Junco de la Vega Site Ignacio Villarreal Site
Tell a Friend
Dear User, please complete the form below in order to recommend the Artdaily newsletter to someone you know.
Please complete all fields marked *.
Sending Mail
Sending Successful