The famous American director, David Lynch, died Thursday January 16 at the age of 78, had several strings to his bow. Music, photography, painting… His artistic creation is not limited to making feature films for the big screen. He excelled in many areas. The filmmaker has released two albums, he has produced images for several musical projects, and has revealed his works at numerous exhibitions.
Between electro and blues
Among his many passions, David Lynch counts music. He has often tried it, but the year 2010 remains a real turning point. The famous director released two titles with an electro tone, under his own name: Good Day Today et I Know. To create the clips, the filmmaker is launching a competition for amateur videographers. Arnold de Parscau, a student from Rennes, is the big winner. A year later, in 2011, he released his first solo album, Crazy Clown Time, then in 2013, he announced the release of a new blues album, The Big Dream.
The gloomy dreaminess on video
Pour Good Day Today et I Knowhis musical creations, he left his place to amateur videographers. However, David Lynch, a year earlier, in 2009, had directed the video for the song Shot in the Back of the Head. This is the first single from the album. Wait for Me by electro artist Moby. Forty years after his short film Six Figures Getting Sickhe therefore returns to animation in this black and white video which evokes a murky dreamscape. At that time, he even seemed to have taken a liking to this type of exercise since he agreed to put in images Dark Night of the Soulthe musical project led by Mark Linkous and Danger Mouse, released the same year.
A protean artistic retrospective
In 2007, David Lynch directed a titanic exhibition at the Fondation Cartier. The Air is on Fire is imagined as an exaltation of the director’s protean genius. Dedicated to Lynch’s creative genesis, the exhibition shows “countless drawings, sketches and other notes, carefully preserved since adolescence”. Before breaking into cinema, David Lynch studied painting and drawing at the Beaux-Arts, which influenced his creative universe throughout his career. This retrospective reflects the Lynchian world, a dreamlike and surreal mixture left to the free interpretation of the viewer. At the opening of the exhibition, he performed a concert on the synthesizer, accompanied by readings of his writings Thoughts. In December 2024, the Duchamp gallery in Yvetot, in Normandy, announced an exhibition of his lithographs planned for the summer of 2025.
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Photography in motion
In 2014, the MEP gave the filmmaker carte blanche to create a photo exhibition. With Small StoriesDavid Lynch uses still images to tell small stories, like short films improvised by the visitor. His photos, in black and white, allow you to escape from reality and enter into a dream. Like his films, this exhibition constitutes a dreamlike journey to the heart of the director’s mind. As with his heads, Lynch has sometimes modeled them and suspends them in the air behind a window, mouths gaping in a kind of scream. In another register, at the Véro-Dodat gallery, in Paris, in 2007, he exhibited his photos of naked female bodies with the exhibition Fetish.
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