Diego Cortez

Diego Cortez (born James Curtis in Geneva, Illinois) is an American art curator closely associated with the no wave period in New York City. In 1981 he curated the art show New York/New Wave. He has been a well-established art adviser since the early 1980s.

Biography

Curtis was born in Geneva, Illinois in September 1946, and grew up in Wheaton, Illinois. In 1973, he adopted the artist pseudonym Diego Cortez. That year he earned a M.F.A. in film, video, and performance at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago studying under Stan Brakhage, Richard Teitelbaum, Anthony Braxton, Nam June Paik and Kenneth Anger. Later that year he moved to Brooklyn.

He has worked as studio assistant to Dennis Oppenheim and Vito Acconci, has performed with Hermann Nitsch and is a founding member of Colab (Collaborative Projects).[1]

The term No Wave became used in downtown New York City concurrent with the 1981 show entitled New York/New Wave that Cortez organized for MoMA PS1.[2] Cortez had organized new wave music festivals in Europe. He also had lectured at Yale University and was co-founder (with Steve Mass and Anya Phillips) of the Mudd Club.

Diego Cortez was the NYC production advisor to Brian Eno on the no wave record No New York that appeared on Island Records[3] and worked with Sylvère Lotringer and Christian Marazzi as art director for Autonomia: Post-Political Politics on Semiotext(e) that came out of the philosophy department at Columbia University. He also was a contributor to the book ABC No Rio Dinero: The Story of a Lower East Side Art Gallery that was edited by Alan W. Moore and Marc Miller.[4]

References
  1. Alan W. Moore and Marc Miller, eds. ABC No Rio Dinero: The Story of a Lower East Side Art Gallery New York: ABC No Rio with Collaborative Projects, 1985
  2. Pearlman, Alison, Unpackaging Art of the 1980s. Chicago: University Of Chicago Press, 2003
  3. Masters, Marc. No Wave. London: Black Dog Publishing, 2007
  4. Alan W. Moore and Marc Miller, eds. ABC No Rio Dinero: The Story of a Lower East Side Art Gallery New York: ABC No Rio with Collaborative Projects, 1985

Sources
  • Masters, Marc. No Wave. London: Black Dog Publishing, 2007. ISBN 978-1-906155-02-5
  • Moore, Alan W., and Marc Miller (eds.). ABC No Rio Dinero: The Story of a Lower East Side Art Gallery. New York: Collaborative Projects, 1985
  • Pearlman, Alison, Unpackaging Art of the 1980s. Chicago: University Of Chicago Press, 2003.
  • Reynolds, Simon. "Contort Yourself: No Wave New York." In Rip It Up and Start Again: Post-punk 1978–84. London: Faber and Faber, Ltd., 2005.
  • Taylor, Marvin J. (ed.). The Downtown Book: The New York Art Scene, 1974–1984, foreword by Lynn Gumpert. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006. ISBN 0-691-12286-5

See also
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