Noah Davis

This striking exhibition catalog celebrates the late artist whose deeply emotional works intermingled realism with abstraction to address complex themes of identity, race, and community.

American artist Noah Davis (1983–2015) believed ‘painting does something to your soul that nothing else can. It is visceral and immediate.’ Drawing on art history, personal archives, anonymous photography found in Los Angeles’ flea markets, and his own imagination, he compiled a ravishing body of figurative paintings that explore a range of Black life. Alongside his celebrated paintings, Davis made drawings, collages, and sculptures, and co-founded the Underground Museum. 

This elegantly designed volume documents the span of Davis’s career and attends to his commitment to representation in the art world and community engagement at the Underground Museum. Alongside new scholarship from writers, artists, and musicians like Tina M. Campt, Claudia Rankine, Marlene Dumas, and Jason Moran, this catalog features high-quality reproductions of Davis’s more widely-known works as well as previously unseen archival material. A vital resource for understanding the depth and significance of his practice, this beautiful publication reveals how humanity, humor, imagination, and above all, people, were the epicenter of Davis’s work.

Wells Fray-Smith is Curator at the Barbican Art Gallery, London. She was formerly Curator at the Whitechapel Gallery, London, and held similar positions at Pace Gallery, London, and The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. 

Paola Malavassi is founding Director of DAS MINSK Kunsthaus, Potsdam, Germany. She was formerly Head of the Julia Stoschek Collection, Berlin, and curatorial assistant of Kasper König at Museum Ludwig, Cologne, Germany. 

Eleanor Nairne is the Keith L. and Katherine Sachs Curator and Head of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. She was formerly Senior Curator at the Barbican Art Gallery, London.