Noah Davis
Publisher: David Zwirner Books / The Underground Museum
Publish Date: 2020
Edited with text by Helen Molesworth. Interviews with Lindsay Charlwood, Dagny Corcoran, Daniel DeSure, Thomas Houseago, Deana Lawson, Henry Taylor, and Venus X by Helen Molesworth
Providing a crucial record of the painter Noah Davis’s extraordinary oeuvre, this monograph tells the story of a brilliant artist and cultural force through the eyes of his friends and collaborators.
Despite his exceedingly premature death at the age of 32, Noah Davis created emotionally charged work that places him firmly in the canon of great American painting. Stirring, elusive, and attuned to the history of painting, his compositions infuse scenes from everyday life with a magical realist atmosphere and contain traces of his abiding interest in artists such as Marlene Dumas, Kerry James Marshall, Fairfield Porter, Mark Rothko, and Luc Tuymans.
This catalogue is published on the occasion of the 2020 exhibition at David Zwirner, New York, which travels to the Underground Museum in Los Angeles, a space that Davis founded with his wife, artist Karon Davis. In her introduction, catalogue essay, and interviews with important figures in Davis’s life, curator Helen Molesworth shows how the artist’s generosity and sense of responsibility galvanized a uniquely supportive artistic community, culture, and vision. Through color illustrations and archival photographs, the book captures the intimate yet expansive spirit of a studio visit with the artist.
Details
Publisher: David Zwirner Books / The Underground Museum
Artist: Noah Davis
Contributors: Helen Molesworth, Lindsay Charlwood, Dagny Corcoran, Daniel DeSure, Thomas Houseago, Deana Lawson, Henry Taylor
Publication Date: 2020
ISBN: 9781644230374
Retail: $75 | £60
Status: Available
Binding: Hardcover
Dimensions: 10 × 12 in | 25.4 × 30.5 cm
Pages: 176
Reproductions: 95 color
Artist and Contributors
Noah Davis
American artist Noah Davis (1983–2015) created a distinctive body of paintings that effortlessly synthesizes a wide range of reference points, pivoting between scenes of everyday life and surreal derivations thereof.
Helen Molesworth
Helen Molesworth is a Los Angeles–based writer, podcaster, and curator. Her major museum exhibitions include: Leap Before You Look: Black Mountain College 1933–1957, This Will Have Been: Art, Love, and Politics in the 1980s, and Work Ethic. She has organized monographic exhibitions of Ruth Asawa, Moyra Davey, Noah Davis, Louise Lawler, Steve Locke, Kerry James Marshall, Catherine Opie, and Luc Tuymans. She is the author of numerous catalogue essays and her writing has appeared in Artforum, Art Journal, Documents, and October. The recipient of the 2011 Bard Center for Curatorial Studies Award for Curatorial Excellence, in 2021 she received a Guggenheim Fellowship and in 2022 she was awarded The Clark Art Writing Prize.
Lindsay Charlwood
Lindsay Charlwood is a director at Matthew Marks Gallery in Los Angeles. She worked closely with Noah Davis during his lifetime, organizing multiple exhibitions of his work that include solo shows at Roberts & Tilton in Culver City, California, and Tilton Gallery in New York.
Dagny Corcoran
Dagny Corcoran is the founder and proprietor of Art Catalogues, an independent bookstore specializing in exhibition catalogues and books on the subjects of modern and contemporary art, photography, and architecture. Presently affiliated with Cahiers d’Art in Paris, Art Catalogues was in residence at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, from 2005 to 2009 and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art from 2010 to 2018.
Daniel DeSure
In 2007, after studying at the California Institute of the Arts, Daniel DeSure founded Commonwealth Projects, a leading creative studio in Los Angeles. More recently, DeSure founded the clothing line Total Luxury Spa and cofounded Tropics, a company dedicated to wellness and youth empowerment.
Thomas Houseago
Thomas Houseago was born and raised in Leeds, England, where he studied at Jacob Kramer Foundation College from 1990 to 1991, and then received his BA in 1994 from St. Martin’s School of Art, London. In 2019, a midcareer survey of his work was held at Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris.
Deana Lawson
Artist Deana Lawson received an MFA in photography from the Rhode Island School of Design. She has had solo exhibitions at The Underground Museum, Los Angeles (2018); Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh (2018); and Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis (2017). In 2020, she will have a survey exhibition at the ICA Boston and MoMA PS1. She is a professor of art at Princeton University.
Henry Taylor
Henry Taylor is an American artist. His work has been featured in group exhibitions in museums worldwide including the 58th Venice Biennale (2019) and the Whitney Biennial, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2017). In 2018, Taylor was awarded the Robert De Niro, Sr. Prize for his contributions in the field of painting.
$75