Published by Gregory R. Miller & Co./Greene Naftali. Text by Jeffrey Weiss.
David Diao (born 1943) has long turned to Barnett Newman’s work as a spur and a foil to his own. This richly illustrated catalog surveys his sustained fascination with the Abstract Expressionist master. Diao worked as an art handler in his 20s and installed Newman’s Stations of the Cross at the Guggenheim in 1966—a signal event that he credits with setting his own course as a painter. On Barnett Newman, 1991–2023 documents a cycle of paintings that tabulate the elder artist’s career through lushly painted charts, lists and diagrams that filter geometric abstraction through the lens of tribute. An original essay by Jeffrey Weiss details the complex blend of reverence and wry humor for which Diao has become known, citing this series as emblematic of his “foundational critical ambivalence regarding modernism—its role as a source of pleasure and skepticism in equal measure.”
Published by Blue Kingfisher. Essay by Michael Corris.
Who puts smiley faces over Warhol-esque silkscreens of Bruce Lee in full howling attack? Who superimposes loungey, gentlemanly, portraits of himself over Jackson Pollock's canvases, as if to take blasª responsibility for their drips? And who makes a tryptich in which Lee and Pollock face off? While we're at it, who puts a black Saint George's cross on a red flag? David Diao, whose artistic life "began thirty years ago very much under the influence of Greenbergian formalism." Diao has since wrestled and mastered twin artistic and racial dragons many times over. Of his MoMa series he says, "...here I stand, a real slanted-eye Asian, desiring however ambivalently to be in the MoMA... in any case I don't mind poking fun at myself at the same time. I am there, smack in the center of the muck."
PUBLISHER Blue Kingfisher
BOOK FORMAT Paperback, 11.75 x 8.25 in. / 72 pgs / 60 color / 6 bw.
PUBLISHING STATUS Pub Date 3/1/2006 No longer our product
DISTRIBUTION D.A.P. Exclusive Catalog: SPRING 2006 p. 126
PRODUCT DETAILS ISBN 9789889868024TRADE List Price: $40.00 CDN $50.00
David Diao: Work 1969-2005