David Lynch is mainly known as a creator of film and
television, but that is only because film and television are the most popular
visual art forms. He actually started living his art life as a painter and
illustrator, and has been much, much more prolific in creating such works than
film and TV over the past 55-or-so years. This is not news to fans, who have
long known that Lynch only began filming in the first place because, as he said
in one of his most oft-quoted statements, “I wanted to see my paintings move.”
In a sense, Lynch’s art always moved with or without
celluloid. His paintings burst off the materials on which he oozes them. They
are swirling, tactile. They are three-dimensional, either because Lynch applies
his oils with such a heavy hand or because he actually sinks objects such as
glass eyes or dead rats into them. They stare back at you. They seem to decay
before your eyes. They speak. They move.
It must madden Lynch to see such massive, dimensional works
shrunk down and reproduced on flat paper as they are in the new collection Someone Is in My House (a tie in with an exhibition at the Bonnefantenmuseum in the Netherlands), but as far as
art books go, this is a nice one. It infuriates me when artworks are
unnecessarily shrunk down for the sake of showing as much white border as
possible, and this book does not commit that crime as egregiously as too many other art and photography collections do. This collection also provides a very wide look at Lynch’s
varied career, not only presenting many of his paintings, but also his
photographs, sculptures, film stills, and even a selection of his “Angriest Dog
in the World” comic strips.
Someone Is in My House
is also notable for presenting a great deal of work I’ve never seen before.
One striking thing about much of this work is how it offers a completely
unfiltered gaze into the abyss of his imagination. The dichotomy between
Lynch’s affable, charming, sedate personality and the violence and
nightmarishness of his films is familiar to anyone who has ever seen Eraserhead or Twin Peaks, but some of the material in this book may shock even
the most hardcore fans of his films. Body are mutated and twisted to the
extreme across his paintings and manipulated photos. Sexual violence looms
queasily in works such as E.D., I Take You to My House, and Do You Want to Know What I Really Think?
Works such as Change the Fuckin’ Channel
Fuckface and Pete Goes to His
Girlfriend’s House distill the explosive anger of Lynch’s most loathsome
screen villains from Frank Booth to Fred Madison, and tempt the viewer to conclude
that Lynch is only able to suppress similar anger with dedicated meditation. An
early sketch depicts an al fresco bestiality orgy. The work is disturbing,
sometimes repellant, though sometimes beautiful, like bits clipped from his
most harrowing cinematic scenes and dipped in dark oils.
