Noah Davis (June 3, 1983[1] – August 29, 2015[2]) was an American painter, installation artist, and founder of the Underground Museum in Los Angeles, CA. When talking about his work, Davis has said, "if I’m making any statement, it’s to just show black people in normal scenarios, where drugs and guns are nothing to do with it," and describes his work as "instances where black aesthetics and modernist aesthetics collide."[3] Davis died at his home in Ojai, California on August 29, 2015 of a rare form of soft tissue cancer.[2]

Noah Davis
Born	(1983-06-03)June 3, 1983 Seattle, Washington, U.S.
Died	August 29, 2015(2015-08-29) (aged 32) Ojai, California, U.S.
Nationality	American
Occupation	Painter and installation artist
Spouse	Karon Davis
Children	Moses Davis
Parent(s)	Keven Davis, Faith Childs-Davis
Relatives	Kahlil Joseph (brother)

Early life

Noah Davis was born on June 3, 1983 in Seattle, Washington.[1] Davis was the youngest son of Keven Davis, a lawyer, and Faith Childs-Davis, an educator. His older brother, Kahlil Joseph, is a filmmaker and video artist who has also shown work at the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA).[1]

Beginnings and education

Davis started painting in his early teenage years, and was so serious about his work that, according to his brother Kahlil, he had his own studio by the time he was just 17 years old.[3] He went on to study painting at the Cooper Union School of Art in New York City from 2001-2004, though he did not graduate. By 2004 he had moved to Los Angeles, and began working at the bookstore at MOCA.[3] He exhibited his paintings as early as 2007, in group exhibitions and solo gallery shows in Los Angeles, New York and elsewhere followed.[2] It was during this time that he began to establish and build a reputation for his work. After having his work featured in a group show curated by Lindsay Charlwood in 2007, Davis gained the attention of Culver City gallery owner Bennett Roberts, of Roberts & Tilton.[1] He would go on to be represented by Roberts for the next 5 years.[1] Over the years, Davis would have his work shown in the Rubell Museum, Nasher Museum of Art, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.[4][5]

Career

Davis became known, for his melancholic portrayals of blurred black figures against barren or shadowy landscapes - paintings that often teetered dangerously into the unreal.[6] During his life he made approximately around four hundred paintings, collages, and sculptures. His paintings are both figurative and abstract, realistic and dreamlike; they are about blackness and the history of Western painting, drawn from photographs and from life; they are energetic and mournful in their palette.[7] "He paints what he sees and thinks, expressing the dynamics of his subject with great dignity and simplicity."[8] Davis had advanced compositions that rendered three dimensional but remained flat.[7] He was influenced by European painters Marlene Dumas and Luc Tuymans, as well as American painters such as Mark Rothko and Fairfield Porter.

Underground Museum

In 2012, he founded the Underground Museum with his wife, the sculptor Karon Davis, his brother Kahlil Joseph and his sister-in-law, the film producer Onye Anyanwu, in Arlington Heights, a historically working-class African-American and Latino neighborhood in Los Angeles. They wanted to bring museum-quality art "within walking distance," as he put it, to a community that had no access to it. The Underground Museum is an artist-run, experimental exhibition space made up of a series of interconnected storefronts in Arlington Heights, CA. Davis' original idea behind the space was to "sidestep the gallery system, preferring to bring museum-quality art to a community that had no access to it 'within walking distance,' as he once put it."[9] The Underground Museum is a cultural hub. John Legend and Solange Knowles have launched albums there; Barry Jenkins, the director of "Moonlight" and Raoul Peck, the director of the James Baldwin documentary "I Am Not Your Negro" have screened their films there.[10] By the time of his death in 2015, Davis had created a special partnership with MOCA in which the museum agreed to loan the Underground Museum works from its permanent collection for a series of shows. Davis himself curated the first one, and left behind plans for 18 others.[9] Today, the Underground Museum is managed by MOCA curator Helen Molesworth, his wife, Karon Davis, and his brother, Kahlil Joseph.[1] Megan Steinman is the current director.[9]

Selected exhibitions

• Noah Davis: Nobody, Roberts & Tilton, 2008[11]
• 30 Americans, Rubell Family Collection, 2008[12]
• Re:Collection, Studio Museum in Harlem, 2010[2]
• Savage Wilds, James Harris Gallery, 2012[4]
• The Missing Link, Roberts & Tilton, 2013[1]
• Garden City, Papillion Gallery, 2014[4]
• Imitations of Wealth, The Underground Museum, 2015[1]
• Young Blood, Frye Art Museum, 2016[13]
• Noah Davis, David Zwirner, 2020[14]

Collections

• Cornell Fine Arts Museum in Winter Park, Florida
• Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, California
• Los Angeles County Museum of Art in Los Angeles, California
• The Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, California
• Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina
• Rubell Museum in Miami Florida
• San Francisco Museum of Art in San Francisco, California
• Santa Barbara Museum of Art in Santa Barbara, California
• The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York

References