Douglas Matthew Davis, Jr. (April 11, 1933 – January 16, 2014) was an American artist, critic, teacher, and writer for among other publications ''

Newsweek ''Newsweek'' is an American weekly online news magazine co-owned 50 percent each by Dev Pragad, its president and CEO, and Johnathan Davis, who has no operational role at ''Newsweek''. Founded as a weekly print magazine in 1933, it was widely ...

''.

Artistic career

In 1977, at the opening of

documenta 6 documenta 6 was the sixth edition of documenta, a quinquennial contemporary art exhibition. It was held between 24 June and 2 October 1977 in Kassel Kassel (; in Germany, spelled Cassel until 1926) is a city on the Fulda River in northern Hess ...

, alongside

Nam June Paik Nam June Paik (; July 20, 1932 – January 29, 2006) was a Korean American artist. He worked with a variety of media and is considered to be the founder of video art. He is credited with the first use (1974) of the term "electronic super h ...

and

Joseph Beuys Joseph Heinrich Beuys ( , ; 12 May 1921 – 23 January 1986) was a German artist, teacher, performance artist, and art theorist whose work reflected concepts of humanism, sociology, and anthroposophy. He was a founder of a provocative art mov ...

, Douglas Davis took part in one of the first international satellite telecasts with his live performance ''The Last Nine Minutes''. Davis received grants for his work by the Rockefeller Foundation, the

National Endowment for the Arts The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) is an independent agency of the United States federal government that offers support and funding for projects exhibiting artistic excellence. It was created in 1965 as an independent agency of the federal ...

& the Trust for Mutual Understanding, among other institutions.

Early internet works

His exploration of interactivity involving various media continued throughout the 1980s and 1990s. He is the author of one of the earliest art pieces on the

World Wide Web The World Wide Web (WWW), commonly known as the Web, is an information system enabling documents and other web resources to be accessed over the Internet. Documents and downloadable media are made available to the network through web ...

, ''

The World's First Collaborative Sentence ''The World's First Collaborative Sentence'' is a work of internet art by Douglas Davis begun in 1994. It is held by the Whitney Museum of American Art, and one version of it remains live to the present day. History Douglas Davis began the "sen ...

'' (1994). His early work is featured on his website, ''The World's First Collaborative Sentence'' (1994), with elements from his exhibition ''InterActions 1967-1981''. They include critical essays by Susan Hoeltzel, Michael Govan, David Ross, and Nam June Paik. Commissioned by the Lehman College Art Gallery, the ''Sentence'' was given by its collectors, Barbara and Eugene M. Schwartz, to the

Whitney Museum of American Art The Whitney Museum of American Art, known informally as "The Whitney", is an art museum in the Meatpacking District and West Village neighborhoods of Manhattan in New York City. It was founded in 1930 by Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney (1875–194 ...

. In 1997, P.S.1/The Institute of Contemporary Art joined with several other museums to host ''MetaBody (The World's First Collaborative Visions of the Beautiful)'', commissioned by George Waterman III. In 1997, Davis launched ''Terrible Beauty'', an evolving global multi-media theater piece. Its "chapters" have been performed before audiences in New York, Dublin, San Francisco, and Berlin.

Teaching and writing

Davis taught advanced media at more than 25 universities and art colleges and served as consultant in this field for several corporations & foundations. Davis published the book ''Art and the Future'' in several countries in 1973. ''ArtCulture: Essays on the Post-Modern'' (1977), is a book of theoretical essays. ''The Five Myths of TV Power (or, Why the Medium is Not the Message)'', 1993, focuses on the crucial importance of the viewer, the "human" element in media theory.

Personal life

Davis lived and worked in New York City until his death on January 16, 2014. He was survived by three daughters, and two granddaughters. His wife of over 30 years, Jane Bell Davis, died in 2005.

Exhibitions

* The Anagrammatic Body, Neue Galerie, Graz, Austria, 1999 * The Net. Condition, Center for Art and Media, Karlsruhe, Germany, 1999 * The American Century, Part II, Whitney Museum, 1999 * Governor's Conference on the Arts and Technology, Information Technology Center, New York (installation), 1998 * P.S. 1/Institute of Contemporary Art, New York (website), 1997 * WithDrawing, Ronald Feldman Fine Arts, New York, 1996 * X-Art Foundation, New York, 1996 * Kwangju Biennale, Korea, 1995 * Museum Sztuki, Lodz, Poland, 1995 (retrospective) * InterActions (1967–1981), Art Gallery, Lehman College, New York City, 1994 * Discours Amoureux, Galerie St. Gervais, Geneva, 1994 * TranceSex, Amanda Obering Gallery, Los Angeles, 1993 * Ronald Feldman Fine Arts (one-man), 1992, 1985, 1984, 1981, 1980, 1977 * Centro de Arte y Communicacion—Harrod's en Arte, Buenos Aires, 1991 * Kunstverein, Cologne, Germany, 1989 * Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, 1986, 1988 * Whitney Museum of American Art, (Biennial 1985), 1981, 1977, 1972 * Venice Biennale, 1976, 1978, 1986 * The New Museum, New York City, 1983, 1984 * The Museum of Modern Art, 1983, * The Hirshhorn Museum & Sculpture Garden, 1983, 1984 * Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1982 (traveling exhibition) * Wadsworth Atheneum, 1982–1983 * Centre Pompidou, Paris, 1981

Publications

*''Essays on the Post-Modern''. New York: Harper & Row, 1977. *''The Museum Transformed: Design and Culture in the Post-Pompidou Age''. New York: Abbeville Press Publishers, 1990. *''The Five Myths of Television Power, Or, Why the Medium is Not the Message''. Riverside, New Jersey, U.S.A.: Simon & Schuster, 1993.

Artistic career

Early internet works

Teaching and writing

Personal life

Exhibitions

Publications

References

Further reading

External links