Lesser known fact about David Lynch: he's a painter, a musician, and a photographer in addition to a filmmaker. This week in Los Angeles, Kayne Griffin Corcoran Gallery debuted a new show focusing on Lynch's visual art. That included shadowy photos of decaying stores and diners, drawings of flies, and paintings with telephones protruding from them––surreal images that could only have emerged from the mind of the man who made cult favorites like Eraserhead and Mulholland Drive.
Lynch made quite a spectacle showing up at the show's preview with his trademark bevy of blondes. But the real star was the work, which ranged from film and photographs to prints and paintings tracing back to Lynch's art school days in the 1960s. Brett Littman, currently the executive director of the DRAWING CENTER in New York and previously the deputy director of MoMA’s PS1, had been personally invited by Lynch to curate the show. I chatted with Brett as we checked out the works.
Noah Adler: How did you meet David Lynch?
Brett Littman: Bill Griffin [of Kayne Griffin Corcoran] introduced me to David Lynch about a year and a half ago and David came to New York and visited me at the Drawing Center. I think David and I had a nice rapport. David is very reticent to talk about the meaning in his work and even about his own films. We ended up talking about a lot of other kinds of things—coffee, my camera collection, and different kinds of old cameras.
How did you get involved in the show?
Bill decided when they opened this gallery that their third show was going to be of David’s new works. When Bill put this show on the calendar, David said, “Maybe Brett could come back and we could put something together.” So I spent two days in LA over the summer working with David at his house and in his studio. I looked at all of his new work, not all of which was complete, but I also went back in his archive and looked at over 700 works. It was a very intense burst.
I curated about 63 works starting with 1968 and the film The Alphabet. Most people say to me, “David Lynch? Filmmaker! Why would we show his artwork?” But David trained as an artist, he started as a painter, so I think this has been absolutely essential to his creativity.
Why is the show called “Naming?"
My part of the show I called “Naming” because I thought it was a very simple and truthful way of dealing with the work. One thing that I kept seeing in David’s work, starting with The Alphabet, was both a distrust and a need for language and image. In his films there is very little dialogue. Yet there was this proclivity and prevalence of language in his photographs and drawings—“Home of Champion” on the side of a building, “Thrifty” signs, the word “ant.”
We started talking about spiritual texts since David is very interested in transcendental meditation. In Hindu texts, when God mentions someone’s name, that thing springs to life and it has a unique existence. In Native American naming ceremonies, when you give something a name it takes on some sense of meaning in the world that is different and new. That’s something that really stuck in my mind, like when a child points at something for the first time and says, “Car!” and suddenly makes that connection between t
Lynch made quite a spectacle showing up at the show's preview with his trademark bevy of blondes. But the real star was the work, which ranged from film and photographs to prints and paintings tracing back to Lynch's art school days in the 1960s. Brett Littman, currently the executive director of the DRAWING CENTER in New York and previously the deputy director of MoMA’s PS1, had been personally invited by Lynch to curate the show. I chatted with Brett as we checked out the works.
Noah Adler: How did you meet David Lynch?
Brett Littman: Bill Griffin [of Kayne Griffin Corcoran] introduced me to David Lynch about a year and a half ago and David came to New York and visited me at the Drawing Center. I think David and I had a nice rapport. David is very reticent to talk about the meaning in his work and even about his own films. We ended up talking about a lot of other kinds of things—coffee, my camera collection, and different kinds of old cameras.
How did you get involved in the show?
Bill decided when they opened this gallery that their third show was going to be of David’s new works. When Bill put this show on the calendar, David said, “Maybe Brett could come back and we could put something together.” So I spent two days in LA over the summer working with David at his house and in his studio. I looked at all of his new work, not all of which was complete, but I also went back in his archive and looked at over 700 works. It was a very intense burst.
I curated about 63 works starting with 1968 and the film The Alphabet. Most people say to me, “David Lynch? Filmmaker! Why would we show his artwork?” But David trained as an artist, he started as a painter, so I think this has been absolutely essential to his creativity.
Why is the show called “Naming?"
My part of the show I called “Naming” because I thought it was a very simple and truthful way of dealing with the work. One thing that I kept seeing in David’s work, starting with The Alphabet, was both a distrust and a need for language and image. In his films there is very little dialogue. Yet there was this proclivity and prevalence of language in his photographs and drawings—“Home of Champion” on the side of a building, “Thrifty” signs, the word “ant.”
We started talking about spiritual texts since David is very interested in transcendental meditation. In Hindu texts, when God mentions someone’s name, that thing springs to life and it has a unique existence. In Native American naming ceremonies, when you give something a name it takes on some sense of meaning in the world that is different and new. That’s something that really stuck in my mind, like when a child points at something for the first time and says, “Car!” and suddenly makes that connection between t