One might say David was born in a burning house. His own endurance of child abuse called him to speak up for the underdog and the underserved throughout his lifetime.
His “burning house” is an iconic symbol of his activist spirit. He first drew the burning house in the accompanying July 6, 1979 journal entry, below, and first stenciled it with spray paint on cars along the Bowery to encourage the city to clean up the street in 1980. At the same time he painted it on East Village sidewalks to promote his band 3 Teens Kill 4. It became his signature—one which led curator Ed Baynard to seek David out for his first show at Alexander Millken gallery (inspiring David’s first painting, Untitled (Green Head), 1982. Not only did the symbol become immediately recognizable as David’s mark, but it suggested the urgency with which he lived life.
“The burning house…was his first artistic trademark,” critic Lucy Lippard writes in Aperture magazine, “and he set some actual fires in his long battle against greed and injustice.”
