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The best abstract painting seems “nothing short of miraculous,” the French poet and critic Yves Bonnefoy remarks, for it satisfies “the desire for the immediate”(1)—for pure sensation, uncorrupted by consciousness of meaning. Bonnefoy thinks that the experience of immediacy—of pure presence, directly given, with no need for language to shape it into comprehension (and mute its impact)--is an illusion. It is a private myth—magical thinking--that has been given social credibility, ironically by the need to escape social pressure. The “conventional readings of the world” are not so much defeated as complicated by the mirage of immediacy, he argues. They need a codicil explaining why the belief in immediacy must be abandoned, however reluctantly. Bonnefoy doesn’t want to wait for the feeling of immediacy to fade away, as it will inevitably do because it is inherently transient, but discredits it as a subjective indulgence. Looking at it from the disillusioning point of view of everyday... READ MORE

Michael David: Faith in Painting by Peter Frank   December 1, 2006

 

A Desperate and Honest Search: Some Notes on New Works by Michael David by Jerry Cullum   December 1, 2006

 

Immediacy Redivivus: Michael David’s Paintings by Donald Kuspit   December 6, 2002

 

Michael David’s Burgeoning Populations by Donald Kuspit   December 6, 2002

 

Michael David by Donald Kuspit   January 1, 2000

 

Michael David: New Encaustic Paintings by Gail Stavitsky   October 14, 1999

 

Michael David at Knoedler by Reagan Upshaw   July 1, 1997

 

A Conversation between Michael David and Lowery Sims   February 1, 1995

 

Michael David at Knoedler by Joseph Ruzicka   January 1, 1994

 

Michael David: From Doppelganger Toward Entelechy by Emily D. Bilski   March 6, 1990

 

Michael David: New Abstractions and the Transcendent Metaphor by David B. Boyce   October 1, 1983

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