James Allan Curtis (September 30, 1946 – June 21, 2021), known professionally as Diego Cortez, was an American filmmaker and
art curator
A curator (from la, cura, meaning "to take care") is a manager or overseer. When working with cultural organizations, a curator is typically a "collections curator" or an "exhibitions curator", and has multifaceted tasks dependent on the parti ...
New York City
New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...
. Cortez was the co-founder of the
Mudd Club
The Mudd Club was a nightclub located at 77 White Street in the TriBeCa neighborhood of Lower Manhattan in New York City. It operated from 1978 to 1983 as a venue for underground music and counterculture events. It was opened by Steve Maas, Die ...
, and he curated the influential
post-punk
Post-punk (originally called new musick) is a broad genre of punk music that emerged in the late 1970s as musicians departed from punk's traditional elements and raw simplicity, instead adopting a variety of avant-garde sensibilities and non-r ...
art show '' New York/New Wave'', which brought the then aspiring artist
Jean-Michel Basquiat
Jean-Michel Basquiat (; December 22, 1960 – August 12, 1988) was an American artist who rose to success during the 1980s as part of the Neo-expressionism movement.
Basquiat first achieved fame as part of the graffiti duo SAMO, alongside ...
to fame.
Early life and education
Cortez was born James Allan Curtis on September 30, 1946, in
Geneva, Illinois
Geneva is a city in and the county seat of Kane County, Illinois, United States. It is located on the western side of the Chicago suburbs. Per the 2020 census, the population was 21,393.
Geneva is part of a tri-city area, located between S ...
, to Jean (née Ham) and Allan Curtis. His mother was a manicurist while his father was a warehouse manager at a steel company. Curtis grew up in the nearby town of
Wheaton, Illinois
Wheaton is a suburban city in Milton and Winfield Townships and is the county seat of DuPage County, Illinois. It is located approximately west of Chicago. As of the 2010 census, the city had a total population of 52,894, which was estimated ...
. He graduated with a bachelor's degree from the
Illinois State University
Illinois State University (ISU) is a public university in Normal, Illinois. Founded in 1857 as Illinois State Normal University, it is the oldest public university in Illinois. The university emphasizes teaching and is recognized as one of th ...
and received a master's degree from the
School of the Art Institute of Chicago
The School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) is a private art school associated with the Art Institute of Chicago (AIC) in Chicago, Illinois. Tracing its history to an art students' cooperative founded in 1866, which grew into the museum and ...
in 1973. He studied performance art as well as film and video production at the institute with teachers including
Avant-garde
The avant-garde (; In 'advance guard' or ' vanguard', literally 'fore-guard') is a person or work that is experimental, radical, or unorthodox with respect to art, culture, or society.John Picchione, The New Avant-garde in Italy: Theoretica ...
filmmaker
Stan Brakhage
James Stanley Brakhage ( ; January 14, 1933 – March 9, 2003) was an American filmmaker. He is considered to be one of the most important figures in 20th-century experimental film.
Over the course of five decades, Brakhage created a larg ...
and the Korean-American filmmaker
Nam June Paik
Nam June Paik (; July 20, 1932 – January 29, 2006) was a Korean American artist. He worked with a variety of media and is considered to be the founder of video art. He is credited with the first use (1974) of the term "electronic super h ...
.
Curtis adopted the
pseudonym
A pseudonym (; ) or alias () is a fictitious name that a person or group assumes for a particular purpose, which differs from their original or true name ( orthonym). This also differs from a new name that entirely or legally replaces an individu ...
Diego Cortez in 1973 while moving to
New York City
New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...
as a tribute to the
Hispanic
The term ''Hispanic'' ( es, hispano) refers to people, cultures, or countries related to Spain, the Spanish language, or Hispanidad.
The term commonly applies to countries with a cultural and historical link to Spain and to viceroyalties for ...
neighborhood of Chicago where he grew up.
Career
Cortez moved to
New York City
New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...
in 1973, where he worked as a studio assistant to conceptual artist
Dennis Oppenheim
Dennis Oppenheim (September 6, 1938 – January 21, 2011) was an American conceptual artist, performance artist, earth artist, sculptor and photographer. Dennis Oppenheim's early artistic practice is an epistemological questioning about the natu ...
and later with designer and performance artist
Vito Acconci
Vito Acconci (, ; January 24, 1940 – April 27, 2017) was an influential American performance, video and installation artist, whose diverse practice eventually included sculpture, architectural design, and landscape design. His foundational p ...
. He went on to embed himself in the music and arts scene in the city while holding multiple jobs including working as a security guard at the
Museum of Modern Art
The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues.
It plays a major role in developing and collecting modern art, and is often identified as one of t ...
.Hager, Steve. ''Art After Midnight: The East Village Scene''. St. Matins Press, 1986. p. 26Alan W. Moore and Marc Miller, eds. ''
ABC No Rio
ABC No Rio is a collectively-run non-profit arts organization on New York City's Lower East Side. It was founded in 1980 in a squat at 156 Rivington Street, following the eviction of the 1979-80 Real Estate Show. The centre featured an art g ...
Dinero: The Story of a Lower East Side Art Gallery'' New York: ABC No Rio with Collaborative Projects, 1985 He also performed with
Avant-garde
The avant-garde (; In 'advance guard' or ' vanguard', literally 'fore-guard') is a person or work that is experimental, radical, or unorthodox with respect to art, culture, or society.John Picchione, The New Avant-garde in Italy: Theoretica ...
artist
Hermann Nitsch
Hermann Nitsch (29 August 1938 – 18 April 2022) was an Austrian contemporary artist and composer. His art encompassed wide-scale performances incorporating theater, multimedia, rituals and acted violence. He was a leading figure of Viennese Ac ...
and was a founding member of the New York-based artists group
Colab
Colab is the commonly used abbreviation of the New York City artists' group Collaborative Projects, which was formed after a series of open meetings between artists of various disciplines.
History
Colab members came together as a collective in ...
. In 1978, he co-founded the
Mudd Club
The Mudd Club was a nightclub located at 77 White Street in the TriBeCa neighborhood of Lower Manhattan in New York City. It operated from 1978 to 1983 as a venue for underground music and counterculture events. It was opened by Steve Maas, Die ...
, a
nightclub
A nightclub (music club, discothèque, disco club, or simply club) is an entertainment venue during nighttime comprising a dance floor, lightshow, and a stage for live music or a disc jockey (DJ) who plays recorded music.
Nightclubs gen ...
in the
Tribeca
Tribeca (), originally written as TriBeCa, is a neighborhood in Lower Manhattan in New York City. Its name is a syllabic abbreviation of "Triangle Below Canal Street". The "triangle" (more accurately a quadrilateral) is bounded by Canal Stree ...
neighborhood of
Lower Manhattan
Lower Manhattan (also known as Downtown Manhattan or Downtown New York) is the southernmost part of Manhattan, the central borough for business, culture, and government in New York City, which is the most populated city in the United States with ...
, with Steve Maas and punk artist and music manager
Anya Phillips Anya Phillips (1955 – June 19, 1981) was an American fashion designer and the co-founder of legendary New York nightclub the Mudd Club along with Steve Maas and Diego Cortez. Phillips had an influence on the fashion, sound and look of the New York ...
.
During this period, he also performed with artists
Kathy Acker
Kathy Acker (April 18, 1947 isputed– November 30, 1997) was an American experimental novelist, playwright, essayist, and postmodernist writer, known for her idiosyncratic and transgressive writing that dealt with themes such as childhood trau ...
and
Laurie Anderson
Laurel Philips Anderson (born June 5, 1947), known as Laurie Anderson, is an American avant-garde artist, composer, musician, and film director whose work spans performance art, pop music, and multimedia projects. Initially trained in violin and ...
, directed music videos for rock bands
Talking Heads
Talking Heads were an American rock band formed in 1975 in New York City and active until 1991.Talki ...
and Blondie, and organized showings of works by the singer and songwriter
Patti Smith
Patricia Lee Smith (born December 30, 1946)
is an American singer, songwriter, poet, painter and author who became an influential component of the New York City punk rock movement with her 1975 debut album ''Horses''.
Called the "punk poet ...
. He also wrote the book ''Private Elvis'', containing photographs of American singer and actor
Elvis Presley
Elvis Aaron Presley (January 8, 1935 – August 16, 1977), or simply Elvis, was an American singer and actor. Dubbed the "Honorific nicknames in popular music, King of Rock and Roll", he is regarded as Cultural impact of Elvis Presley, one ...
during Presley's time with the army, that he found in
West Germany
West Germany is the colloquial term used to indicate the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG; german: Bundesrepublik Deutschland , BRD) between its formation on 23 May 1949 and the German reunification through the accession of East Germany on 3 O ...
. Cortez was the NYC production advisor to Brian Eno on the no wave record ''
No New York
''No New York'' is a compilation album released in 1978 by record label Antilles under the curation of producer Brian Eno. Although it only contained songs by four different artists, some consider it to be a definitive single album documenting Ne ...
'' (1978) which was released by Island Records.
In the late 1970s, the avant-garde music and art movement called No Wave came about in the downtown region of the city. In 1981, Cortez curated the group exhibition ''New York/New Wave'' to showcase a new generation of artists in the downtown art scene. The show was held at the P.S. 1 Contemporary Art Center, now known as
MoMA PS1
MoMA PS1 is a contemporary art institution located in Court Square in the Long Island City neighborhood in the borough of Queens, New York City. In addition to its exhibitions, the institution organizes the Sunday Sessions performance series, the ...
Queens
Queens is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Queens County, in the U.S. state of New York. Located on Long Island, it is the largest New York City borough by area. It is bordered by the borough of Brooklyn at the western tip of Long ...
. It was a massive exhibition featuring over 100 artists including
Andy Warhol
Andy Warhol (; born Andrew Warhola Jr.; August 6, 1928 – February 22, 1987) was an American visual artist, film director, and producer who was a leading figure in the Art movement, visual art movement known as pop art. His works explore th ...
William S. Burroughs
William Seward Burroughs II (; February 5, 1914 – August 2, 1997) was an American writer and visual artist, widely considered a primary figure of the Beat Generation and a major postmodern author who influenced popular cultur ...
Nan Goldin
Nancy Goldin (born September 12, 1953) is an American photographer and activist. Her work often explores LGBT subcultures, moments of intimacy, the HIV/AIDS crisis, and the opioid epidemic. Her most notable work is '' The Ballad of Sexual Depe ...
,
Keith Haring
Keith Allen Haring (May 4, 1958 – February 16, 1990) was an American artist whose pop art emerged from the New York City graffiti subculture of the 1980s. His animated imagery has "become a widely recognized visual language". Much of his wor ...
,
Fab Five Freddy
Fred Brathwaite (born August 31, 1959), more popularly known as Fab 5 Freddy, is an American visual artist, filmmaker, and hip hop pioneer. He is considered one of the architects of the street art movement. Freddy emerged in New York's downtown ...
,
Futura 2000
Leonard Hilton McGurr (born November 17, 1955), known as Futura, and formerly known as Futura 2000, is an American graffiti artist.
Biography
He started to paint illegally on New York City's subway in the early 1970s, working with other artist ...
Jean-Michel Basquiat
Jean-Michel Basquiat (; December 22, 1960 – August 12, 1988) was an American artist who rose to success during the 1980s as part of the Neo-expressionism movement.
Basquiat first achieved fame as part of the graffiti duo SAMO, alongside ...
to fame by attracting the attention of art dealers such as
Annina Nosei Annina Nosei (born 1939) is an Italian-born art dealer and gallerist. Nosei is best known for being Jean-Michel Basquiat’s first art dealer and providing him with studio space in the basement of her gallery. From 1981 to 2006, the Annina Nosei Ga ...
and Bruno Bischofberger. In 1982, Basquiat introduced Cortez to his then-girlfriend Madonna, who invited Cortez to be her manager, but he declined to focus on curating art shows. He later declined an offer from
Larry Gagosian
Lawrence Gilbert "Larry" Gagosian (born April 19, 1945) is an American art dealer who owns the Gagosian Gallery chain of art galleries. Working in concert with collectors including Douglas S. Cramer, Eli Broad, and Keith Barish, he developed a ...
for a directorship at his gallery.
Cortez continued to work as an art agent and curator, working with Brian Eno, and on the
Luciano Benetton
Luciano Benetton (born 13 May 1935) is an Italian billionaire businessman and one of the co-founders of Benetton Group, an Italian fashion brand. He served as the chairman of Benetton from 1978 to 2012.
Early life
Luciano Benetton was born on ...
and Frederick Roos collections. During the latter part of his career he was unsuccessful in trying to start a museum in
Puerto Rico
Puerto Rico (; abbreviated PR; tnq, Boriken, ''Borinquen''), officially the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico ( es, link=yes, Estado Libre Asociado de Puerto Rico, lit=Free Associated State of Puerto Rico), is a Caribbean island and unincorporated ...
. He released an album, ''Traumdeutung'', in 2014, which was an eclectic mix of music and sounds of his snoring.
Cortez was a member of the authentication committee for the estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat, which ceased operation in 2012.
Death
Cortez died from kidney failure at the age of 74 on June 20, 2021, in Burlington, North Carolina. Cortez had been in hospice while living in nearby
The Brooklyn Rail
''The Brooklyn Rail'' is a publication and platform for the arts, culture, humanities, and politics. The ''Rail'' is based out of Brooklyn, New York. It features in-depth critical essays, fiction, poetry, as well as interviews with artists, criti ...
in October 2021. Tribute to Diego Cortez published in
The Brooklyn Rail
''The Brooklyn Rail'' is a publication and platform for the arts, culture, humanities, and politics. The ''Rail'' is based out of Brooklyn, New York. It features in-depth critical essays, fiction, poetry, as well as interviews with artists, criti ...
Books
* Cortez, Diego (editor) (1978). ''Private Elvis''. Fey. ISBN 978-3883611013
* Cortez, Diego; Glenn O'Brien, O'Brien, Glenn; Sui, Anna (2005). ''Maripolarama''.
PowerHouse Books
powerHouse Books is an independent publisher of art and photography books founded in 1995 by Daniel Power, based near the Brooklyn waterfront of DUMBO in The powerHouse Arena.
The powerHouse Arena also serves as a gallery, bookstore, and event ...
Hatje Cantz
Hatje Cantz Verlag (English: Hatje Cantz Publishing) is a German book publisher specialising in photography, art, architecture and design. It was established in 1945 by Gerd HatjeISBN
The International Standard Book Number (ISBN) is a numeric commercial book identifier that is intended to be unique. Publishers purchase ISBNs from an affiliate of the International ISBN Agency.
An ISBN is assigned to each separate edition an ...
Conceptual art
Conceptual art, also referred to as conceptualism, is art in which the concept(s) or idea(s) involved in the work take precedence over traditional aesthetic, technical, and material concerns. Some works of conceptual art, sometimes called insta ...
*
Colab
Colab is the commonly used abbreviation of the New York City artists' group Collaborative Projects, which was formed after a series of open meetings between artists of various disciplines.
History
Colab members came together as a collective in ...
*
Mudd Club
The Mudd Club was a nightclub located at 77 White Street in the TriBeCa neighborhood of Lower Manhattan in New York City. It operated from 1978 to 1983 as a venue for underground music and counterculture events. It was opened by Steve Maas, Die ...
Just Another Asshole Just Another Asshole was a no wave mixed media publication project launched from the Lower East Side of Manhattan from 1978 to 1987. Barbara Ess organized and edited seven issues of Just Another Asshole, which formed thanks to an open, collaborativ ...
*
New wave music
New wave is a loosely defined music genre that encompasses pop-oriented styles from the late 1970s and the 1980s. It was originally used as a catch-all for the various styles of music that emerged after punk rock, including punk itself. La ...
Postmodern art
Postmodern art is a body of art movements that sought to contradict some aspects of modernism or some aspects that emerged or developed in its aftermath. In general, movements such as intermedia, installation art, conceptual art and multimedia, ...
References
Sources
* Boch, Richard.''The Mudd Club''. Feral House, 2017.
* Hager, Steve. ''Art After Midnight: The East Village Scene''. St. Matins Press, 1986.
* Masters, Marc. ''No Wave''. London: Black Dog Publishing, 2007.
* Moore, Alan W., and Marc Miller (eds.). ''
ABC No Rio
ABC No Rio is a collectively-run non-profit arts organization on New York City's Lower East Side. It was founded in 1980 in a squat at 156 Rivington Street, following the eviction of the 1979-80 Real Estate Show. The centre featured an art g ...
Dinero: The Story of a
Lower East Side
The Lower East Side, sometimes abbreviated as LES, is a historic neighborhood in the southeastern part of Manhattan in New York City. It is located roughly between the Bowery and the East River from Canal to Houston streets.
Traditionally an im ...