Gordon Stevenson

Not to be confused with Gordon Stevenson (painter).
For the multimedia artist with the same name, see Baron Von Fancy.

Gordon Stevenson was an artist, actor, musician and filmmaker who died of AIDS on August 14, 1983[1], one of the East Village art community’s first casualties of the AIDS epidemic[2].

Personal life

Born on February 5, 1954[3], in Cornwall, New York, he attended Eckerd College in St. Petersburg, Florida, where he met Arto Lindsay in the 1970s. (Notably, China Burg and Mark Cunningham of Mars also attended Eckerd at this time, as did Liz and Bobby Swope of Beirut Slump.) While a student, he met Mirielle Cervenka (née Mary Kathryn, a.k.a. Spike) and her younger sister Exene Cervenka (née Christine, later of the band X). Gordon and Mirielle married in 1976 and moved to New York City[4]. A well-known figure of the East Village underground, Stevenson was close to such Lower East Side figures as Fun Gallery director Patti Astor and fashion designer Anna Sui. Stevenson's younger brother, Davey Stevenson, bass player in the early 1980s Athens, Georgia band Limbo District[5], also died of AIDS on October 8, 1993[6]. Both Gordon and Davey are buried in Dublin, Georgia.

Music

Stevenson and Mirielle were founding members of DNA, though both left to work with Teenage Jesus and the Jerks. Mirielle was the band's manager, while Stevenson became the bass player for Lydia Lunch's band Pre Teenage Jesus and the Jerks and Teenage Jesus and the Jerks between November 1977 to June 1978[7], one of several No Wave bands featured on the album No New York. Stevenson, with Teenage Jesus and the Jerks, also released music on Charles Ball's Lust/Unlust label, and toured England.

Film

As an actor, he appeared in Michael McClard's 1979 no wave cinema film Alien Portrait, in Eric Mitchell's 1978 film Kidnapped, and again in Mitchell's 1979 film Red Italy.[8] Most notably, Stevenson directed his own no wave film Ecstatic Stigmatic: the film with a disease in 1980.[9] Starring Mirielle Cervenka as Little Rose, Ecstatic Stigmatic also featured performances by Arto Lindsay, Johnny O’Kane, Brenda Bergman and Anita Paltrinieri. The film premiered at the Mudd Club on September 4, 1980.[10]

AIDS death

Stevenson died in August 1983, an early casualty to the AIDS epidemic, not long after his wife, Mirielle, was killed in an auto accident while visiting her sister in Los Angeles and promoting Ecstatic Stigmatic.[11] Cookie Mueller wrote about Stevenson, and quotes a personal letter from him written during his illness, in her book Walking Through Clear Water in a Pool Painted Black, published by Semiotext(e) after her death (also from AIDS, in 1989).

Footnotes

  1. ^ "Gordon Stewart Stevenson (1954-1983) - Find a..." www.findagrave.com. Retrieved 2026-01-05.
  2. ^ "Oral history interview with Carrie Yamaoka, 2016 July 26-27 | Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution". www.aaa.si.edu. Retrieved 2026-01-05.
  3. ^ "Gordon Stewart Stevenson (1954-1983) - Find a..." www.findagrave.com. Retrieved 2026-01-05.
  4. ^ "Instagram". www.instagram.com. Retrieved 2026-01-05.
  5. ^ "'They taught me how to dress': Michael Stipe on Limbo District, the greatest band you've never heard of". the Guardian. 2024-07-22. Retrieved 2026-01-05.
  6. ^ "David Wayne Stevenson (1960-1993) - Find a Grave..." www.findagrave.com. Retrieved 2026-01-05.
  7. ^ "From The Archives -Teenage Jesus & The Jerks- Concert Chronology / Gigography". fromthearchives.com. Retrieved 2026-01-05.
  8. ^ [1] Gordon Stevenson page at IMDB
  9. ^ Boch, Richard (2017). The Mudd Club. Port Townsend, WA: Feral House. p. 315. ISBN 978-1-62731-051-2. OCLC 972429558.
  10. ^ [2] Mudd Club poster for Ecstatic Stigmatic, the film with a disease
  11. ^ Boch, Richard (2017). The Mudd Club. Port Townsend, WA: Feral House. p. 316. ISBN 978-1-62731-051-2. OCLC 972429558.

References

  • Carlo McCormick, The Downtown Book: The New York Art Scene, 1974–1984, Princeton University Press, 2006.
  • Alan 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.
  • Masters, Marc. No Wave. London: Black Dog Publishing, 2007. ISBN 978-1-906155-02-5
  • 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
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