Douglas Davis (1933-2014) was an artist, theorist, critic, teacher, and writer of contemporary art in the 1960's. His early performance video pieces established him as a pioneer of using film as an artistic medium. Additionally, Davis served as the art and architecture critic for Newsweek magazine from 1969 to 1988. In 1977, at the opening of documenta 6 in Kassel, Germany, Davis joined Nam June Paik and Joseph Beuys in the first live international satellite telecast by artists with his live performance The Last Nine Minutes.
Davis was the author of several books, including Architecture: Essays on the Post-Modern (1977), The Museum Impossible: Architecture and Culture in the Post-Pompidou Era (1990), and The Five Myths of Television Power: or, Why the Medium Is Not the Message (1993). His work has appeared in numerous museums in the US and Europe. Davis received a bachelor’s from American University and a master’s from Rutgers University. He lived and worked in New York until his death in 2014.
