“Noah davis believed in the power of art.” this is curator Helen Molesworth, speaking to Flaunt on the eve of the release of the landmark monograph she edited on the late Los Angeles artist, whose dual-mode career encompassed a breathtaking painting practice and the establishment of the game-changing public gallery, The Underground Museum, in West Ad- ams, Los Angeles. Both of these arcs were cut short when Davis tragically died at the age of 32 in 2015—and yet through the dedication of his extended art and blood families, both dreams continue to not only endure but to blossom.
“He had the career of someone twice his age,” says Molesworth, adding that, “the sheer undeniability of his body of work” manifests in every single plate. Across visceral and elegantly rendered genre and domestic scenes and complexified portraits, as this fully illustrated book demonstrates, when it came to Davis’ studio practice, there truly were no unsatisfying pieces. He created with verve and studied hard, but even among friends and colleagues he talked more about The Underground Museum than about his own art. In his short lifetime, he had a handful of critically acclaimed shows in Los Angeles, New York, and Seattle, all of which sold out; the pieces whisked off to private collections and the occasional institution. And so for Molesworth, the chance to work with mega-gallery David Zwirner to curate a comprehensive career survey and publish the accompanying book was finally a chance to show the scope of his brilliance to everyone—and to situate his art within the context of The UM, and (vice versa).
“The mind of this person produced a whole world,” says Molesworth. “He was a world-builder both in the paintings and in his life.” An imitable merger of hard-core art history with the frankness of lived experience was the energetic core of both the aesthetic and the mission. “The UM was born fully formed as a concept,” Molesworth says, “It was immediately legendary.”