Inside the major new exhibition of Noah Davis’ extraordinary paintings

Some people are only here for an instant but live with the intensity of a lightning flash. The late painter Noah Davis, who died in 2015 at the age of 32, was one such person. Despite the brevity of his life, Davis produced a remarkable and wholly original body of work. The Barbican will honour his legacy in their new exhibition, Noah Davis, the first and largest retrospective of Davis’ work to date, featuring more than 60 artworks and paying homage to The Underground Museum, which Davis co-founded with his wife and fellow artist Karon in 2012.

I had the pleasure of visiting The Underground, located in Los Angeles’s historic Arlington Park neighbourhood, before its closure in 2022. Created with a mission to “create a cultural hub that ensures no one has to travel outside of the neighbourhood to see world-class art”, the Underground was refreshingly hybrid, operating as a gallery, library and community centre in one. It was a work of art itself.

[Noah Davis’] biggest impact is that he was able to re-orient the world across compassionate lines. He was committed to doing things differently and making everything he did in the service of others – Wells-Fray Smith

The exhibitions, all curated by Davis, were intellectually stimulating yet accessible. My visits often felt profound; I remember feeling particularly moved and inspired after leaving Roy DeCarava: The Work of Art. Art seemed to function differently in the Underground, carrying a resonance I’ve yet to experience elsewhere. Davis bridged worlds brilliantly; you could see Deana Lawson’s photographs one month, and an Olafur Eliasson sculpture another. Bound by no limits – racial, aesthetic or otherwise – Davis had an undeniably punk sensibility. When museums refused to loan artworks to the Underground for a planned exhibition, Davis pivoted and boldly re-created the works instead, producing tongue-in-cheek replicas of iconic readymades by Marcel Duchamp and Jeff Koons. “There was no monopoly on creativity or what he thought of [as] being worthy of being studied, integrated and reimagined,” says Wells Fray-Smith, one of the curators of the exhibition. 

Davis, who studied painting at The Cooper Union, was a dedicated student of art history who sought to master his craft. “He had a deep and obsessive knowledge [of] and relationship [to] the history of art and painting in particular,” says Fray-Smith, his references ranging from “Édouard Manet and Caspar David Friedrich” to “Marlene Dumas, Peter Doig and Romare Bearden”. Davis shifted easily between figurative painting, abstraction and sculpture, the entire history of art up for grabs.

You can’t forget a Noah Davis painting. “They get under the skin,” Fray-Smith says. Often there’s a sense of unrest or unease, a hint of anticipation or fear. Everyday scenes – two young women napping on a couch, a family barbecue – transform into surreal and haunting daydreams. Yet humour abounds in titles such as “Bad Boy for Life”, in which a woman raises a hand to spank the young boy on her knee, and “NO-OD for Me”, which depicts a father and son beneath a floating Hollywood sign missing its final two letters.

 Davis’ “technical dexterity” astounded Fray-Smith when she first encountered his work. “He was able to move so agilely between styles,” Fray-Smith elaborates. “What I recognised in him was someone who was completely confident in applying paint. One painting in particular, “The Conductor”, silenced her. In it, the conductor floats in front of a storefront, awash in various shades of blue. Fray-Smith was taken by Davis’ ability to alchemise paint and the surface of the canvas into feeling. 

Spanning the years 2007 to 2015, Noah Davis opens with a section titled “Domestic Spirits” that focuses on the uncanny elements of Davis’s work. “The aim was to capture all strands of his making, from his painting to curatorial activity, and give a sense of the extraordinary diversity he had in his materials and modes of expression,” explains Fray-Smith. Included in the exhibition is a presentation of Savage Wilds, a series of paintings that have gone unseen since their first exhibition at James Harris Gallery in 2012. Here, Davis represents moments from the tabloid talk shows Maury, Ricky Lake and Jerry Springer, notorious for their negative depiction and exploitation of their Black participants. For Fray-Smith, the series underscores Davis’s ability to “handle challenging subject matter with a point of view and lightness”.

When an interviewer once asked Davis how long he’d been a painter, he responded, “My whole life”. For Davis, the life of the artist was one of utter devotion, and not just to one’s own talent. “His biggest impact is that he was able to re-orient the world across compassionate lines,” says Fray-Smith. “He was committed to doing things differently and making everything he did in the service of others.” 

32 once seemed old to me. Now, as I approach the age, it seems far too young. But what a gift to have the work, which deepens and grows with time, remaining just as enigmatic and striking as its maker. 

Noah Davis is showing at the Barbican Centre until 11 May, 2025. Dazed Club+ members get 50% off tickets to the exhibition. Become a member here.