Thursday, January 16, 2025

American filmmaker David Lynch dies at 78. https://ift.tt/MVAj9bx

David Lynch, the eccentric American director known for his enigmatic filmography, including Eraserhead and Mulholland Drive, has died at 78. His family announced his death on Facebook on January 16th. In 2024, Lynch revealed that after decades of smoking he had developed emphysema, which would prevent him from directing.

“It is with deep regret that we, his family, announce the passing of the man and the artist, David Lynch,” the post stated. “We would appreciate some privacy at this time. There’s a big hole in the world now that he’s no longer with us. But, as he would say, ‘Keep your eye on the donut and not on the hole.’ It’s a beautiful day with golden sunshine and blue skies all the way.”

He Went and He Did Do That Thing, N/A
David Lynch
Pace Gallery

Lynch’s surreal filmography and distinctive style have given rise to the term “Lynchian,” which alludes to the dreamlike, extravagant, and unsettling characteristics of his work.

Born on January 20, 1946, in Missoula, Montana, Lynch began his career as an aspiring painter at the Corcoran School of the Arts and Design in Washington, D.C., before transferring in 1964 to the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. Shortly thereafter, Lynch dropped out before traveling around Europe. He returned to enroll at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, where he graduated in 1967.

Just before graduating, Lynch made his first foray into film when he created Six Men Getting Sick in 1967. It featured a minute-long loop of silhouetted figures vomiting, disappearing, and reappearing. From this point forward, he would be better known for his work in film and television, though he continued aan art practice for the next six decades.

Portrait, n.d.
David Lynch
Sperone Westwater

Lynch moved with his wife and daughter to Los Angeles in 1970, where he began studying filmmaking at the AFI Conservatory. There, he dove head-first into filmmaking. He spent five years completing his first feature film, Eraserhead, a dystopian and surrealistic horror film. Critics mostly dismissed the film, but after an executive producer from Mel Brooks’s production company saw Eraserhead, Lynch was given the opportunity to direct The Elephant Man in 1980.

The Elephant Man put Lynch on the map in mainstream Hollywood. George Lucas offered Lynch a chance to direct Return of the Jedi, but Lynch declined. Instead, the director adapted Frank Herbert’s epic sci-fi novel Dune in 1984. Unlike the Star Wars sequel, Dune became a commercial and critical failure, often attributed to the significant cuts and editing in post-production.

Yet, Lynch’s career is better known for the string of bewildering films that followed Dune. In 1986, Lynch made his aesthetic mark with Blue Velvet, a bizarre neo-noir thriller that simultaneously became a cult hit and earned Lynch his second Oscar nomination for best director (the first was for The Elephant Man). Four years later, Wild at Heart, starring Laura Dern and Nicholas Cage, won the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival. Lynch reached superstardom with his famed television show Twin Peaks, an idiosyncratic murder mystery that aired for two seasons in 1990 and 1991. Lynch received his third and final Oscar nomination for arguably his most celebrated film, Mulholland Drive in 2001.

Head with Bug on Head, 2010
David Lynch
Sperone Westwater

After the release of his final film, Inland Empire, in 2006, Lynch retreated from feature films. Over the next decade, he only released a third season of Twin Peaks in 2017. However, during this time, Lynch began to present his paintings and sculptures more often at venues, including Item Gallery in Paris, Galerie Karl Pfefferle in Munich, and Tilton Gallery in New York, among others. After being passed over several times at the Academy Awards, Lynch received an honorary Lifetime Achievement Oscar in 2019.

In 2019, on the occasion of his show “Squeaky Flies in the Mud” at Sperone Westwater, Lynch told Artsy of his interest in material in his artworks: “I love textures. I love organic phenomena. I like the ins and the outs and the flat. All of it. That’s where it’s at right now. It just has to be that way. I like working with all kinds of materials. Each thing does a certain thing. When you put them together, it gets magical to me.”

Pace Gallery mounted an exhibition of Lynch’s sculptures and paintings in 2022 titled “Big Bongo Night.” It debuted alongside another solo show at Sperone Westwater in New York. His visual artwork has been the subject of several exhibitions worldwide, including those at Fondation Cartier pour l‘contemporain in 2007, The Photographers’ Gallery in 2017, and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in 2014, among others.



from Artsy News https://ift.tt/53uwicO

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