Noah Davis (1983–2015) was a figurative painter and cofounder of theUnderground Museum (UM) in Los Angeles. Despite his untimely death at the age of thirty-two, Davis’ paintings are a crucial part of the rise of figurative and representational painting in the first two decades of the twenty-first century.
Loneliness and tenderness suffuse his rigorously composed paintings, as do traces of his abiding interest in artists such as Marlene Dumas, Kerry James Marshall, Fairfield Porter, [MarkRothko], and Luc Tuymans.Davis’ pictures can be slightly deceptive; they are modest in scale yet emotionally ambitious. Using a notably dry paint application and a moody palette of blues, purples, and greens, his work falls into two loose categories: There are scenes from everyday life, such as a portrait of his young son, a soldier returning from war, or a housing project designed by famed modernist architect Paul Williams. And there are paintings that traffic in magical realism, surreal images that depict the world both seen and unseen, where the presence of ancestors, ghosts, and fantasy are everywhere apparent.
Generous, curious, and energetic, Davis founded—along with his wife, the sculptor Karon Davis—the Underground Museum, an artist- and family-run space for art and culture in Los Angeles. The UM began modestly—Noah and Karon worked to join three storefronts in the city’s Arlington Heights neighborhood. Davis’ dream was to exhibit “museum-quality” art in a working-class black and Latino neighborhood. In the early days of the UM, Davis was unable to secure museum loans, so he organized exhibitions of his work alongside that of his friends and family, and word of mouth spread about Davis’ unique curatorial gestures.
In 2014 Davis began organizing exhibitions using works selected from the MOCA Los Angeles’ collection as his starting point. In the aftermath of Davis’ passing, the team of family and friends he gathered continued his work at the UM, transforming it into one of the liveliest and most important gathering places in Los Angeles for artists, filmmakers, musicians, writers, and activists. — Helen Molesworth
The exhibition NOAH DAVIS—curated by Molesworth—is now on view at David Zwirner in New York. An iteration of the show will open at the Underground Museum in Los Angeles in March 2020.
A new Davis monograph—featuring an introduction by Molesworth and oral history interviews that she conducted with Davis’ friends, family, and colleagues—is forthcoming.
Lorna Simpson and Thelma Golden – the director and chief curator of The Studio Museum in Harlem – are holding court at the UndergroundMuseum this week to discuss, among other things, the publication of LORNA SIMPSON COLLAGES, a new monograph published by Chronicle Books.
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THELMA GOLDEN and LORNA SIMPSON, Thursday, May 24, at 7 pm.
Through the end of the 1950s, the bourgeois protagonists of Michelangelo Antonioni’s films actively engaged their surroundings and maintained some sense of control.
Everything changed in 1960. The surroundings became monolithic and oppressive, and the world took notice as the great modernist director—in a series of films featuring Monica Vitti—cast an excoriating eye on the moral rot and entropy in contemporary Italian society.
After L’Avventura (1960) and before L’Eclisse (1962), Antonioni conjoined a triangle of great European stars—Vitti, Marcello Mastroianni, and Jeanne Moreau—for LA NOTTE (1961), dismissed by Pauline Kael as another “sick-soul-of-Europe” display, but praised by more thoughtful viewers as a feminist critique of capitalism.
Bring a sweater and a blanket for a night of LA NOTTE in The Underground Museum’s Purple Garden. This Film Foundation screening is part of a series—Purple Garden Cinema—curated by Kahlil Joseph.
LA NOTTE, Friday, September 15. Doors open at 8 pm. Free popcorn!!
THE UNDERGROUND MUSEUM, 3508 West Washington Boulevard, Los Angeles.
From top: Jeanne Moreau (left) and Monica Vitti in La Notte; Vitti and Marcello Mastroianni; Vitti; La Notte opening title card; Mastroianni and Moreau, nightclub scene in La Notte. Image credits: Criterion.
“Colors, like scents, are a royal road from the outside world to our emotions.” — Peter Schjeldahl*
The Underground Museum—founded in Los Angeles in 2012 by artists Noah Davis and Karon Davis—is dedicated to the exhibition of museum-quality art, and serving as a cultural hub for low-to-moderate-income communities.
According to UM director Megan Steinman, the museum’s current show ARTISTS OF COLOR—the third UM show curated by Noah Davis before his death in 2015—explores “how color is perceived or deployed, and how that can shift over time or by culture.”** Artists represented in the show include Josef Albers, Lita Albuquerque, Michael Asher, Jo Baer, Jeremy Blake, Noah Davis, Dan Flavin, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Joe Goode, Carmen Herrera, E.J. Hill, Jim Hodges, Jennie C. Jones, Donald Judd, Ellsworth Kelly, Imi Knoebel, DianaThater, and Brenna Youngblood.
The museum has strong local partnerships with LAXART, MOCA, and Martin Scorsese’s Film Foundation. and future programming will be organized by Karon Davis (Noah’s wife), artist and director Kahlil Joseph (Noah’s brother), and MOCA chief curator Helen Molesworth.
All programs are provided free of charge.
ARTISTS OF COLOR, through February 4, 2018.
THE UNDERGROUND MUSEUM, 3508 West Washington Boulevard, Los Angeles.
From top: Joe Goode, Purple, 1961–1962. Photograph by Brian Forrest. Image credit: Underground Museum, MOCA, and Joe Goode Studio.
Noah Davis, 2004 (1), 2008. Image credit: Collection of Lindsay Charlwood and Ryan McKenna, and the Underground Museum.
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