Background
Noah Davis was born on June 3, 1983, in Seattle, Washington, United States. He was a son of Keven Davi, a lawyer, and Faith Childs-Davis, an educator.
2015
3508 W Washington Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90018, United States
Noah Davis with a guest at the Film Independent Hosts L.A. Night at the Underground Museum on May 6, 2015, in Los Angeles, California. Photo by Alberto E. Rodriguez.
2015
3508 W Washington Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90018, United States
(Left to right) Film Independent Curator Elvis Mitchell, LAFF Director Stephanie Allain, and artist Noah Davis at the Film Independent Hosts L.A. Night at the Underground Museum on May 6, 2015, in Los Angeles, California. Photo by Alberto E. Rodriguez.
30 Cooper Sq, New York, NY 10003, United States
The Cooper Union where Noah Davis studied from 2001 to 2004.
Single Mother with Father Out of the Picture by Davis purchased at Phillips for $168,750 in 2019.
Noah Davis at work.
Noah Davis was born on June 3, 1983, in Seattle, Washington, United States. He was a son of Keven Davi, a lawyer, and Faith Childs-Davis, an educator.
Noah Davis revealed his passion for drawing as a teenager. According to his elder brother Kahlil, Davis established his own studio by the age of seventeen.
From 2001 to 2004, Davis attended the Cooper Union, New York City but he didn't receive a diploma.
The start of Noah Davis's career can be counted from 2004 when he came to Los Angeles after dropping the studies at the Cooper Union. He first earned his living serving in a bookstore of the Museum of Contemporary Art. Experimenting with painting, Davis created a series of melancholic portraits that featured black silhouettes on the desert or shadowy backgrounds. A group exhibition at the Culver City gallery where he presented some of his paintings in 2007 was visited by its owner Bennett Roberts who noticed the artist. Roberts was the representative of Davis’s art during the next five years.
It was a successful period for Davis whose works were exhibited and acquired by the Nasher Museum of Art in North Carolina, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the Rubell Family Collection, Miami.
The Rubells helped the young artist to show within the '30 Americans' traveling exhibition a year later. Davis showed his works in a company of such artists as Kara Walker, David Hammons, and Carrie Mae Weems.
In 2012, Noah Davis along with his wife Karon established the Underground Museum in a working-class neighborhood of Los Angeles, Arlington Heights. The main goal of this non-profit art space was defined as to bring the so-called high-quality art to the communities that usually have no access to it.
Henry Taylor, William Pope L. and David Hammons have demonstrated their artworks at the art venue. While Noah Davis alive, the Museum organized a collaborative exhibition with the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles who furnished the art space with several items from its funds. The show was curated by Davis himself. The artist planned 18 more shows.
Nowadays, the Underground Museum is managed by Helen Molesworth, curator of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, Davis's brother Kahlil and Davis's wife Karon.
Isis
Leni Riefenstahl
Pueblo del Rio: Concerto
Untitled
Mary Jane
The Future's Future
Candyman
Bust 3
Bibliophile
Painting for My Dad
Untitled
The Internal Contract
Man with Shotgun and Alien
Tourists
The Missing Link 2
The Missing Link 3
The Missing Link 4
The Missing Link 6
The Missing Link 1
1984
What They Did to Themselves
Noah Davis never positioned his works as politically concerned although many of the figures he depicted were African American. The artist considered his paintings as "instances where black aesthetics and modernist aesthetics collide."
Quotations: "Painting does something to your soul that nothing else can. It's visceral and immediate and is always readdressed in new ways that keep it relevant."
Physical Characteristics: Noah Davis's death was caused by a rare form of soft tissue cancer.
Quotes from others about the person
"He made some four hundred paintings, collages, and sculptures, although I think it’s fair to say the deep DNA truth of Noah was that he was first and foremost a painter. 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 exuberant and doleful in their palette, influenced by European painters Marlene Dumas and Luc Tuymans, as well as American ones such as Mark Rothko and Fairfield Porter." Helen Molesworth, art curator of the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art
"Noah had lots of friends and, if you ever meet one, I hope you'll ask them to tell you a story about him. Let them bring him forward." Helen Molesworth, art curator of the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art
"He could make a completely realized painting in a matter of hours. He could also work on something for such a long time that it ended up disappearing, and you never saw it again.
Everything always existed in strong opposition within his work and within his personality too. Nothing was ever simple for him.
I think that's really the beauty of his work. I think Noah is the best painter of my generation, and I feel strongly about that. I always have…. Everything he did was so honest and made from a place of necessity." Lindsay Charlwood, curator and gallery director
"He was a smart-ass kid, but a kid that I listened to…. I know a lot of artists. But being around Noah was something totally different.... Noah raised the motherfucking bar." Henry Taylor, artist
"There was a profound honesty to his work. His touch had a real pulse. He had this thing that cannot be taught." Bennett Roberts, gallery owner
Noah Davis was married to Karon Davis, a sculptor. The family produced a son named Moses.