 |
| Noah Davis, Man With Alien and Shotgun, 2008. Private collection |
The Underground Museum is closed. I (unknowingly) saw its Noah Davis show on the last day it would be open. This is a version of the widely praised Helen Molesworth and Justen Leroy-curated exhibition that appeared in larger form at David Zwirner's New York and London galleries. Though distilled to about 20 paintings, the UM presentation was the most extensive survey of Davis' art in a Los Angeles institution.
 |
| Noah Davis, untitled, 2015. Museum of Modern Art |
Davis' art combines the lived reality of Black life with the absurd. Magic realism has long been a component of Black art and literature, from Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man to Atlanta. Davis paints ectoplasmic ETs and Neo Rauch space oddities. Some paintings imagine African or Euro-modern flatness as 3D reality (the underlying joke of Picasso's surrealism).
A sense of the uncanny pervades even Davis' intimist mode. MoMA's painting of two girls sleeping resists logical explanations. The girls are dressed, napping on a couch. The door at right is ajar, and a mostly unseen man (apparently) at left dozes or watches as a cake box on his lap disintegrates into drippy paint. Davis builds on the painterly concerns of Marlene Dumas, Richard Diebenkorn, and Alice Neel. But what, actually, is happening?
 |
| Noah Davis, Pueblo del Rio: Concerto, 2014. Kravis Collection |
A group of Davis' paintings pay homage to the Pueblo del Rio public housing project (1941), designed by Richard Neutra and Paul Williams. Good modern intentions were defeated by time, crime, and civic indifference. Davis reimagined the projects as a stage for musical and dance performances, a conception not so different from that of establishing an art museum in Arlington Heights.
The Pueblo del Rio paintings have a restrictive palette of purple, green, rose/salmon, and grayscales. Similar hues recur throughout the paintings on view here. The Man With Alien and Shotgun is standing not in front of a door but against a hard-edge abstract wall painting. A slice of brilliant green is as jarring as the alien.
"Noah Davis" opened Jan. 28. This is a show that deserves to be seen more widely in Davis' home city. Given that the paintings were originally lent through September, could any nimble L.A. institution find a way to take it on?
 |
| Noah Davis, Pueblo del Rio: Public Art Sculpture, 2009. UCLA Hammer Museum |
 |
| Noah Davis, Imaginary Enemy, 2009. Private collection |
 |
| Noah Davis, untitled (Moses), 2010. Private collection |
 |
| Noah Davis, Painting for my Dad, 2011. Rubell Museum, Miami |
Comments
I'm loving his Pueblo del Rio: Concerto, 2014, from the Kravis Collection. It whispers of a reverse-Magritte. The brilliantly moonlit buildings; sheet music and white piano keys...excellent.
Go to the link provided, above, and the web site reads: No Image Available.
Well, may I suggest LACMA check out a new-fangled outfit called Google?
Talk about a museum shooting itself in the foot.
What good is a museum that doesn't educate?
See the LACMA work by Davis at...
https://img.huffingtonpost.com/asset/5bb24cd02200004301db89eb.jpeg?ops=scalefit_960_noupscale&format=webp
Even the Getty's catalogue does not compare favorably to the Met's (which is probably the industry standard).