Lynch, multi-card artist with a special link with France

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Giant of American cinema, author of the cult series Twin PeaksLynch, 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 et Lulathen the Directing Prize in 2001 for Mulholland Drive.

He “elegantly chaired the jury in 2002“, recalled the festival and its general delegate, Thierry Frémaux, on Friday January 17, welcoming “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.“, paid tribute to him the Minister of Culture, Rachida Dati.

French moviegoers are loyal to him: more than 2 million spectators for Elephant Man et Dunealmost a million for Sailor et 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 et Twin Peaks : Fire Walk with Me from the 1990s, by getting closer in particular to Francis Bouygues and Alain Sarde.

His love story with France goes far beyond the 7^e 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 continuous creative ferment“, she added, very moved.

It is the former general director of the foundation, Hervé Chandès, who “discovered his studio 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, whatever they are“, she detailed.

Concert with Patti Smith

The foundation dedicated a major monographic exhibition to him in 2007, The Air is on Fireat the origin of the privileged relationships that the artist maintained with her and Paris, and made her works of art and installations known in Europe and around 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 my hands in ink, working away from the cinema“, confided M^me 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 may have encountered him in the French capital, appearing without warning from a “huge black car” to rush into an art gallery which exhibited his lithographs, features the comic book author Riad Sattouf.

He tells it with humor on Instagram: “Everyone stares at him but no one dares to 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 answer, with a tight throat: +Uh yes, thank you very much+. It serves me to the brim“, says Sattouf.

AFP/VNA/CVN