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