Far from Mulholland Drive and Los Angeles, David Lynch was, beyond films, a multi-card artist, designer, sculptor, photographer and musician, having established a special link with France, where he had even designed a private night club unique in Paris.
Giant of American cinema, author of the cult series “Twin Peaks”, Lynch, who died at the age of 78, was very appreciated in Europe, and particularly in France, where he received the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival. in 1990 for “Sailor and Lula”, then the Best Director Award in 2001 for “Mulholland Drive”.
He “elegantly chaired the jury in 2002”, recalled the festival and its general delegate, Thierry Frémaux, on Friday, saluting “a unique and visionary artist whose work will have influenced cinema like few others before”.
“David Lynch was admired throughout the world and particularly by the French public who hailed him as a daring artist who gave no limits to his creativity,” Minister of Culture Rachida Dati paid tribute to him.
French moviegoers are loyal to him: more than 2 million spectators for “Elephant Man” and “Dune”, almost a million for “Sailor and Lula”. He is one of the few, with Woody Allen, to have twice received the César for best foreign film.
Above all, it is thanks to French producers that this unclassifiable artist will shoot some of his films, including “Lost Highway” and “Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me” from the 1990s, working in particular with Francis Bouygues and Alain Sardinian.
His love story with France goes far beyond the 7th Art. She goes through fashion, from her collaborations with Agnès B. to a medium-length film shot for Dior, where it features Marion Cotillard. “I wish you a wonderful trip David”, reacted the most Hollywood of French actresses.
Originally, it was the Cartier Foundation for Contemporary Art which highlighted Lynch’s talents as a visual artist, told AFP Grazia Quaroni, director of his collection which includes around 4,500 works of some 500 international artists, including a large part of the director’s drawings.
“A heritage revealing its continued creative ferment,” she added, very moved.
It was the former general director of the foundation, Hervé Chandès, who “discovered his workshop in Los Angeles and revealed to the world all the facets of expression of David Lynch, filmmaker but also painter, designer, sculptor, scenographer, photographer , musician, of immense generosity and rare attention to others, whoever they may be,” she detailed.
-– Concert with Patti Smith –
The foundation dedicated a major monographic exhibition to him in 2007, “The Air is on Fire”, at the origin of the privileged relationships that the artist had with her and Paris, and made his works of art and installations known in Europe. and in the world. She was the starting point for numerous collaborations and has published several beautiful books on her work.
David Lynch is often in Paris. In Montparnasse, he discovered the printing press and the Idem lithography workshop, where he “spent a lot of time with his hands in ink, working away from the cinema”, confided Ms. Quaroni.
He could give a concert with Patti Smith or design an exhibition with Russian mathematician Misha Gromov.
The night owls paraded in the exclusive Parisian nightclub in the second arrondissement that he entirely designed, Silencio.
Among those who were able to meet him in the French capital, emerging without warning from a “huge black car” to rush into an art gallery which was exhibiting his lithographs, was the comic book author Riad Sattouf.
He tells it with humor on Instagram: “Everyone stares at him but no one dares approach him. He enters, calmly, vaguely greets the small crowd. And then, everyone starts talking again, pretending to ignore him ( as if nothing had happened, obviously).
“He takes a bottle of white wine, looks at me and, with his Gordon Cole voice, an FBI agent straight out of Twin Peaks, he says to me as if I were deaf: +Do you want some white wine?+ I respond, with a tight throat: +Uh yes, thank you very much+. It serves me to the brim,” says Sattouf.
