Gordon Stokes Kurtti was an American artist, writer, illustrator and performer.
19 Facts About Gordon Kurtti
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Gordon Kurtti was a seminal figure in the early East Village art scene of New York City's Lower East Side.
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In many opinions, such as that of writer Sarah Schulman, the loss of such potential arbiters as Gordon Kurtti changed the course of world culture forever.
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Gordon Kurtti was a member of Allied Productions, a not-for-profit arts organization based in New York City.
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Gordon Kurtti was shy and somewhat introverted but known for his love of reading and early artistic abilities.
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Gordon Kurtti had a vivid imagination and an affinity for comic book art, monster movies and outer space.
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Gordon Kurtti grew up drawing elaborate spaceships complete with flight instructions and statistics.
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Gordon Kurtti admired and drew mythical heroes like Prince Valiant and was inspired by the first existentialist, Hamlet.
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Gordon Kurtti graduated from Yonkers Preparatory High School and was accepted into New York's School Of Visual Arts at a time when alumni such as Keith Haring were exploding onto the downtown New York scene.
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Gordon Kurtti collaborated on various art projects with many of his peers placing him within the circle of second generation of co-directors at Abc No Rio that included Jack Waters, Peter Cramer, and Carl George, and Colab predecessors Bradley Eros and Aline Mare - then performing as the partnership Erotic Psyche.
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In 1984 Pfahler and Gordon Kurtti organized The Extremist Show at ABC No Rio.
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Gordon Kurtti was influenced by all of these, and he in turn contributed to their impact through his creative activities and his presence in their fomentation.
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Gordon Kurtti collaborated with Carl George on a showroom design for Yumi Katsura, Japan's pre-eminent wedding gown designer and again collaborated on the fashion show launch event featuring a young Brooke Shields.
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Gordon Kurtti designed the stage and room decor one of the first AIDS fund-raising events for the Henry Grethel menswear line in 1986.
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Gordon Kurtti drew a spot-on caricature of Sam Shepard for the 1984 La Mama presentation of Shepard Sets, a series of three short plays: Suicide in B Flat, Angel City and Black Bog Beast.
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Gordon Kurtti proved himself to be a master of realist drawing with a wry sense of humor.
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Gordon Kurtti created and performed his work The Bearded Bride in the 1985 production Foho Tell Dreams at Danspace Project at Saint Mark's Church.
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Gordon Kurtti was an early collaborator on many experimental film works by Carl George, Jack Waters, Bradley Eros and Leslie Lowe and Brad and Brian Taylor.
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The film and moving image works in which Gordon Kurtti appears and in whose production to which he principally contributed are in the collections of Anthology Film Archives, The Film Makers Cooperative, the Reserve Film and Video Collection of the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts and the Downtown Collection of New York University's Fales Library.