Matthew Courtney, Downtown Artist Who Platformed Others, Dies at 66
Street artist Matthew Courtney, a founding member of the grassroots Lower East Side arts nonprofit ABC No Rio and host of its celebrated Wide Open Cabaret series, died last week in his Brooklyn apartment at the age of 66. A police investigation found that the cause of death was an accidental overdose, a member of the collective told Hyperallergic.
Born in 1959, Courtney grew up in Portland, Oregon, before eventually moving to New York City in the early 1980s, where he helped foster the growth of ABC No Rio, then an artists’ squat. From the mid-1980s through early 1990s, he hosted the weekly anything-goes open-mic event Wide Open Cabaret at the art collective’s historic 156 Rivington Street address.
The series was an underground hub for New York outsider artists and dissident voices, and known for putting on eccentric, radical, and raw performances spanning ten-minute political ramblings, spoken word poetry, and experimental music and theater. As writer Rebecca Moore wrote for Mirabella Magazine in 1990, “Sometimes it’s horrible, sometimes it’s a glimpse of emerging brilliance.” Courtney had just one stipulation for those who signed up to participate: “You are on your honor to be amazing!”
ABC No Rio member and comic artist Fly Orr told Hyperallergic that she was “blown away” by Courtney’s presence the first time she attended one of the Wide Open Cabaret events.
“The audience was his co-host, but he was always the one in the spotlight,” Orr said, recalling how audience members would frequently chime in to offer words of encouragement, sing alongside performances, or voice their opposition. Amid all the loud chaos, “[Courtney] always knew how to rein it all in and get everyone back to a manageable state … with his very commanding, mellifluous baritone.”
Courtney’s theatrics were captured in readings of his original poetry, such as “Car Poem Number 1” and “Honey, I’m Home!,” the latter of which saw him walk through a yellow doorway and curl up on the floor in imitation of a buttered scone.
“He was beloved and admired by all who met him,” Orr continued. “He shined as much off stage as he did onstage.”
Courtney was also a longtime fixture of Soho’s street community. Beginning in the early 2000s, he erected his makeshift, sidewalk-based Steps to Nowhere Gallery outside storefronts and restaurants on Prince Street, including metal steps that led into the wall of a now-defunct J.Crew, the Apple Store, and Fanelli Cafe, showcasing brightly colored Pop Art portraits and humorous poetic meanderings. Many of his artworks were produced on repurposed found materials like cardboard boxes and segments pulled from the New York Times (his favorite was the weather section, according to a 2008 Blogspot post).
“I used to draw on the front page of the New York Times, but the screaming headlines and dramatic photos used to rattle people and I’d stopped doing that,” Courtney said in a 2013 video interview filmed at the Steps to Nowhere Gallery. He turned toward other immediately accessible material: A 2021 photo posted to Instagram depicts a painting made on a paper subway notice, and other images demonstrate that he frequently used slabs of wood as canvases.
“Matthew, we carry forward the memory of your presence,” ABC No Rio wrote in a Facebook post. “You made room for the voices others overlooked, and reminded us that art is not just something we make, but something we live by.”
In commemoration of Courtney, the collective is distributing copies of the self-published zine documenting the Wide Open Cabaret series this week; those interested can acquire these publications from its library at 107 Suffolk Street in Manhattan’s Lower East Side.
