FEATURED ARTICLE
[In]accessible: On the Art of David Lynch
From March 3 through May 27 2007, the Fondation Cartier in Paris hosts a major exhibition that focuses on the art of David Lynch, entitled The Air is on Fire. The exhibition will be showcasing, in many cases for the first time, the vast breadth of his artistic skill, including painting, drawing, video, sound and photos, many of which have never been released to the public eye.
The event comes at a time in the artist's life when the predominant theme seems to be synthesis. Last year, Lynch turned 60 and won a Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival for a lifetime of contribution to film, the youngest director to receive the award. INLAND EMPIRE was also released last year, his first feature in 5 years. The production is a three-hour autobiographic montage of images, sensations and impressions spanning the entirety of his directorial career, yet it also asserts itself as an entirely new creation.
On several occasions, Lynch has maintained that everything comes from painting. Drawing and painting since he was a child, Lynch reluctantly divulges Francis Bacon and Edward Hopper as influences.
Obsessed with texture and the world underneath things, just a bit of a stretch beyond what we normally see, Lynch's work is perhaps best described as uncanny, often incorporating a sense of slowness that begs a desirous gaze. David's art seeks a way in or a way out that wasn't previously there before, as if looking through the window of the possible. In much of his work he incessantly returns to black and various shades of gray because of their depth and association with dreaming.
David Lynch's art has allowed him to 'speak' in ways that would otherwise, to his mind, be more or less incomplete or impossible. Although in interviews he seems to be quite lucid and down to earth, he admits his aversion to words. But just what is it that he's communicating? This issue has perpetually been the linchpin in the controversy among critics and audience alike.
Lynch resists any kind of acute intellectualization of his work. He is often criticized as inaccessible and pretentious. However, Lynch lives and generally works in the United States, and, like most artists, reflects what he sees. "…I think the American public is so surreal, and they understand surrealism. The idea they don't is so absurd. It's just that they've been told they don't understand. You go anywhere and old-timers will tell you very surreal stories with strange humour. And everyone has a friend that is totally surreal."
That this relates to the nature of the film industry in general, is a point of consequence for Lynch. "[I]t's a big problem," he says. "In studios, more often then not these days, it's not one person making the decisions: it's a committee. And if there's money at risk, their jobs are at risk and they become afraid. So they need to understand what it is they're going to make. So it decreases the chance for any abstractions. Abstractions are not something you wanna throw money at!"
Sensation, feeling, visceral experience and love are precisely some of those abstractions Lynch deems inexpressible. However, it remains Lynch's drive to express the inexpressible. If it sounds like a contradiction in terms it's because it is, well, sort of. In an interview for INLAND EMPIRE Lynch said, "It's a risk, but I have this feeling that because all things are unified, this idea over here in that room will somehow relate to that idea over there in the pink room." Lynch has developed a holistic philosophy of life that is accentuated by a quirky, often morbid, sense of humor and playfulness. He delights in accidents and mistakes, exploiting them to beautiful proportion.
Lynch's obsession with the theme of 'life in darkness and confusion' frustrates the human tendency to know, to explain and to possess. Instead, his art shows that if we allow this little struggle with ourselves (being too comfortable would be death), it will whisper its own inner truth. For Lynch, frustration is a strength. It's the struggle which keeps us on our toes.
It's not important to Lynch that his particular truth comes through his work, but that his audiences can let go of prescripted meaning and glean their own significance. Lynch does not intend for his art to shut people out. On the contrary, the element of the hidden or missing factor he incorporates is meant to attract. It has a voyeuristic quality, seducing the viewer into an inescapable relationship with the work of art. "To me a mystery is like a magnet. Whenever there is something that's unknown, it has a pull to it.... When you only see a part, it's even stronger than seeing the whole. The whole might have a logic, but out of its context, the fragment takes on a tremendous value of abstraction. It can become an obsession."
In Pretty as a Picture, Toby Keelers documentary, Lynch's daughter Jennifer maintains that her father has always been process-oriented. He has distilled something essential out of his explorations. "It's the continuing story thing that has the stupid pull," Lynch affirms. "In a continuing story, not knowing where this is all taking you is thrilling. Seeing and discovering the way is a thrill." Themes of corridors, passageways, multitudes of rooms - elements that function to bleed together what seem to be disparate facets of his work. He thinks that people get more out of something they've had to figure out for themselves.
Filmmaking allows Lynch to incorporate all of his varied artistic skills. In this extremely competitive industry, he remains on the cutting edge, managing to walk a fine line between the artistic obscure, while at the same time eliciting interest from the mainstream, however obsessive that relationship may be.
References
-Keeler, Toby (Dir.). Pretty as a Picture, 1997.
-Rodley, Chris (Ed.). Lynch on Lynch. New York: Faber and Faber, Inc., 2005.
http://www.thecityofabsurdity.com/
http://www.fondation.cartier.fr/
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