"Life is very, very complicated, and so films should be allowed to be, too," David Lynch once said. The filmmaker, musician, visual artist, musician, (and let's face it, he was just David Lynch and that meant it all) passed away today, January 16, 2025. His films were completely singular in that only he could make them, surreal and just out of touch with reality that you almost felt like you could imagine yourself just on the precipice of his universe but could never quite grasp it. "Twin Peaks" changed the way television was made, leading nearly a decade ahead of its time that you could make smart, challenging, fun, dramatic, surreal mystery narratives for a cult, if not a pop, audience. He just created a world that was insular but familiar. He had a self-awareness of it, too, which is why I loved him so much, He knew he was an image maker and an image unto himself, and he never let us down in that character, but he also didn't oversell it.
We play with phrases like iconic, legandary, influential, and those all are ways to describe David Lynch. But he is something more, an adjective and a verb, an expression of what we call art but can't define. He made complicated work because he wanted us to feel like it was okay to see the world as complicated, to look deeper, but also to just let your imagination be the guide. He once said, "Just slow things down and it becomes more beautiful." How simple and yet how complicated is that? —Evan Pricco
Portrait of David Lynch, photography by Josh Telles, via Pace Gallery.
