RIP DAVID LYNCH
America’s strangest and most surreal film-maker died on January 16th, aged 78. We are seriously saddened by the tragic news.
David Lynch intrigued film fans and creatives with mystery, magic, beauty and horror. He launched into hyperspace last week, leaving behind a masterful legacy of bizarro art, schizoid film and offbeat metaphysics.
Cinema is best when it is weird and surreal, enveloping us in motifs of freakyness and hypnagogic states of mind. David Lynch was the daddy-o of freaky cinema, and had a storyteller's eye for the ways craziness unfolds and entropy takes over life. Like a good artist should, he looked for new ways to multiply narrative and unfurl the layered, interior chaos of the human psyche. He did it like a champ. He also had a deep metaphysical/mystical side, emphasizing transcendental approaches to making art and interpreting life.
For him, irony, paradox and out-of-consensus aesthetics inspired his work. What others deemed ugly or grotesque carried its own strange allure. He was captivated by textures and vibes — the look and feel of dirt, dust, gunk and slime. Even blisters and gushing wounds held a peculiar beauty for the auteur. The downtrodden, mutant and misfit class struck his fancy, giving rise to what critics called “Populist surrealism”, which he pioneered in his arthouse thrust. His cinematic output like “Blue Velvet”, “The Elephant Man,” “Eraserhead”, and “Twin Peaks” inspired a generation of artists, writers and weirdos to push boundaries and breathe new life into experimental film-making and neo-noir everything.
David Lynch was truly the master of avant-garde motion picture, a conjurer of dreams and nightmares who transformed the mundane into the viscerally excellent. His artistic cosmos, spanning everything from painting and poetry to fashion and advertising, elevated the genre wholesale; he inspired and directed music videos for artists such as Nine Inch Nails, Duran Duran, Die Antwoord and Comme des Garçons, and commercials for Dior, YSL, Gucci and even the New York City Department of Sanitation.
David was a kind of ninja kingpin of the underground art world — the alpha and omega of non-Euclidean perfection, melodrama, the subconscious and beautiful strangeness. His haunting visuals, dissonant soundscapes, and complex characters teetering on the edge represented an exquisite WTF enigma. His art probed the dark undercurrents of small-town life and a society teetering on a razor’s edge. Epiphanies emanated from everything he created. David gave us otherworldly scenes and intricate dances of chance that inspire awe and absolute ecstasy. His work is not merely watched and worshipped — it is palpably felt, lingering like a half-remembered dream seeping into the consciousness and vibrating the zeitgeist.
A singular visionary, David dared to make psychic singularities that define the sublime and propel the avant-garde forward. GODDAMN do we miss David Lynch!
