The Wide-Ranging Creative Genius of David Lynch (RIP): Discover His Films, Music Videos, Cartoons, Commercials, Paintings, Photography & More

Image by Sasha Kar­galt­sev via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

As every cinephile has by now heard, and lament­ed, we’ve just lost a great Amer­i­can film­mak­er. From Eraser­head to Blue Vel­vet to Mul­hol­land Dri­ve to Inland Empire, David Lynch’s fea­tures will sure­ly con­tin­ue to bewil­der and inspire gen­er­a­tion after gen­er­a­tion of aspir­ing young auteurs. (There seems even to be a re-eval­u­a­tion under­way of his adap­ta­tion of Dune, the box-office cat­a­stro­phe that turned him away from the Hol­ly­wood machine.) But Lynch was nev­er exact­ly an aspir­ing young auteur him­self. He actu­al­ly began his career as a painter, just one of the many facets of his artis­tic exis­tence that we’ve fea­tured over the years here at Open Cul­ture.

Lynch stud­ied paint­ing at the Penn­syl­va­nia Acad­e­my of Fine Arts in the mid-nine­teen-six­ties, and the urban decay of Philadel­phia at the time did a great deal to inspire the aes­thet­ic of Eraser­head, which made his name on the mid­night-movie cir­cuit a decade lat­er. When the MTV era fired up in just a few years, he found his sig­na­ture blend of grotes­querie and hyper-nor­mal­i­ty — what would soon be termed “Lynchi­an” — in demand from cer­tain like-mind­ed record­ing artists. It was around that same time that he launched a side career as a com­ic artist, or in any case a com­ic writer, con­tribut­ing a thor­ough­ly sta­t­ic yet com­pelling­ly var­ied strip called The Angri­est Dog in the World to the LA Read­er from the ear­ly eight­ies through the ear­ly nineties.

In 1987, the year after the art-house block­buster that was Blue Vel­vet set off what Guy Maddin lat­er called “the last real earth­quake in Amer­i­can cin­e­ma,” Lynch host­ed a BBC tele­vi­sion series on the his­to­ry of sur­re­al­ist film. That ultra-mass medi­um would turn out to be a sur­pris­ing­ly recep­tive venue for his high­ly idio­syn­crat­ic art: first he made com­mer­cials, then he co-cre­at­ed with Mark Frost the ABC mys­tery series Twin Peaks, which prac­ti­cal­ly over­took Amer­i­can pop­u­lar cul­ture when it debuted in 1990. (See also these video essays on the mak­ing and mean­ing of the show.) Not that the phe­nom­e­non was lim­it­ed to the U.S., as evi­denced by Lynch’s going on to direct a mini-sea­son of Twin Peaks in the form of canned-cof­fee com­mer­cials for the Japan­ese mar­ket.

Even Mul­hol­land Dri­ve, the pic­ture many con­sid­er to be Lynch’s mas­ter­piece, was con­ceived as a pilot for a TV show. Not long after its release, he put out more work in ser­i­al form, includ­ing the sav­age car­toon Dum­b­land and the har­row­ing sit­com homage Rab­bits (lat­er incor­po­rat­ed into Inland Empire, his final film). In the late two-thou­sands, he pre­sent­ed Inter­view Project, a doc­u­men­tary web series co-cre­at­ed by his son; in the ear­ly twen­ty-tens, he put out his first (but not last) solo music album, Crazy Clown Time. That same decade, his pho­tographs of old fac­to­ries went on dis­play, his line of organ­ic cof­fee came onto the mar­ket, his auto­bi­og­ra­phy was pub­lished, and his Mas­ter­Class went online.

Lynch remained pro­lif­ic through the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic of the twen­ty-twen­ties, in part by post­ing Los Ange­les weath­er reports from his home to his YouTube chan­nel. In recent years, he announced that he would nev­er retire, despite liv­ing with a case of emphy­se­ma so severe that he could no longer direct in any con­ven­tion­al man­ner. Such are the wages, as he acknowl­edged, of hav­ing smoked since age sev­en, though he also seemed to believe that every habit and choice in life con­tributed to his work. Per­haps the smok­ing did its part to inspire him, like his long prac­tice of Tran­scen­den­tal Med­i­ta­tion or his dai­ly milk­shake at Bob’s Big Boy, about all of which he spoke open­ly in life. But if there’s any par­tic­u­lar secret of his for­mi­da­ble cre­ativ­i­ty, it feels as if he’s tak­en it with him.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Twin Peaks Actu­al­ly Explained: A 4‑Hour Video Essay Demys­ti­fies It All

David Lynch Teach­es You to Cook His Quinoa Recipe in a Strange, Sur­re­al­ist Video

David Lynch Being a Mad­man for a Relent­less 8 Min­utes and 30 Sec­onds

David Lynch Explains Why Depres­sion Is the Ene­my of Cre­ativ­i­ty — and Why Med­i­ta­tion Is the Solu­tion

David Lynch Mus­es About the Mag­ic of Cin­e­ma & Med­i­ta­tion in a New Abstract Short Film

David Lynch Tries to Make a List of the Good Things Hap­pen­ing in the World … and Comes Up Blank

Ange­lo Badala­men­ti Reveals How He and David Lynch Com­posed the Twin Peaks’ “Love Theme”

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.