Living and loving amid two worlds

David Lynch, the maverick American artist renowned for his macabre and enigmatic films, passed away last month at 78 due to emphysema, caused by years of smoking. Expectedly, the cinematic world responded with an outpouring of grief.  

Steven Spielberg regarded Lynch as one of his heroes, describing him as “an original and unique voice.” Ron Howard found him to be “a gracious man and a fearless artist who followed his heart and soul, proving that radical experimentation could yield unforgettable cinema.” Francis Ford Coppola said he was “astounded and heartbroken.” Martin Scorsese reflected, “Lynch put images on the screen unlike anything I or anyone else had ever seen.” 

Over a career spanning more than four decades, Lynch created a series of influential and acclaimed films that captivated audiences and garnered prestigious awards, including the Honorary Academy Award and the Cannes Best Director Award. His works adopted a distinctive surrealist, noir style with complex characters, unexpected encounters, and startling settings. Breaking away from conventional storytelling and traditional film techniques, they combined humour and horror to emphasise the absurdity of human existence and show how reality can be twisted, challenged, and distorted. The surreal, often nightmarish perspectives, shocked the viewers, immersing them in the brave new world of Lynchian cinema. 

Lynch was a die-hard admirer of Franz Kafka. “The one artist that I feel could be my brother is Franz Kafka. I really dig him a lot. Some of his works are the most thrilling combos of words I have ever, ever read. If Kafka wrote a crime picture, I’d be there. I’d like to direct that.” He tried hard (but failed) to make a cinematic adaptation of Kafka’s short story The Metamorphosis. Critics, however, feel that many of Lynch’s transformations of nightmarish ideas and characters evoke the power and essence of Kafka’s literary masterpiece.

Rooted in visual art

Aside from filmmaking, Lynch was an avid visual artist, actor, and musician. His distinguished career in cinema was rooted in a vibrant practice of visual art. Born in Missoula, Montana, in 1946, Lynch began painting and drawing at a young age. He attended the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (PAFA) in the 1960s. In 1967, he made Six Men Getting Sick (1967), a 16-mm experimental film incorporating elements of painting, sculpture, film, sound, and installation.  

Over the ensuing decades, he continued his studio practice, producing a range of canvas paintings that depicted eerie scenes and unsettling characters. “I started out being a painter, and the film came out of wanting to make a picture move. So I always say the same rules of painting apply to a lot of cinema, and you could say that films are moving paintings that tell a story with sound.”

In addition to painting, he experimented with lithography, black-and-white photography, drawings, comics, collage, sculptures, and stop-motion animation. Lynch explored language and experimented with various materials in his paintings. He incorporated odd things like bandages, fake flowers, and silver tubes to add a new dimension to his art. Lynch’s paintings, while less widely known than films, were exhibited internationally in prestigious venues. His alma mater in Philadelphia hosted a retrospective in 2014-15. His high-profile solo exhibitions included ‘Between Two Worlds’ at the Queensland Art Gallery in Brisbane, Australia (2015) and ‘The Air is on Fire’ at the Fondation Cartier, Paris (2007). Art critic Jackson Arn observed that “in Lynch’s most arresting creations, something terrible is always hiding behind the dumpsters, some tightly coiled horror putting us back on our heels.” 

Light and shade

Several painters seemed to impact Lynch’s visual style and sensibilities. He considered the Irish-born British figurative painter Francis Bacon his biggest inspiration. “The organic phenomenon in Bacon’s paintings and his use of space are incredible.” American realist painter and printmaker Edward Hopper, who captured the loneliness of urban existence through moodiness, voyeurism, and striking contrasts of light and shade, was another favourite.

He believed that the viewer and his/her “internal dialogue” were critical to understanding and experiencing an artwork. “The painting or the photograph or the film remains the same, but it is the viewer who is the magic part of the whole process. And it is different for each individual even when the painting or photograph is exactly the same.” He also thought of film or TV shows as being like a magic act.

“And magicians don’t reveal how they accomplished their tricks.”