David Lynch. The Air Is On Fire

by Various

A book presenting multifaceted artist David through a large selection of his paintings, photographs, drawings, experimental movies, and acoustic creations.

The first major collection of artwork by the acclaimed movie director David Lynch.

Spanning a period of forty years, David Lynch's widely respected films and television series include Eraserhead, The Elephant Man, Blue Velvet, Twin Peaks, Lost Highway, and Mulholland Drive. However, his prolific visual art production, which began even before his films, has rarely been seen.

In March 2007, the Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain presented The Air is on Fire, an exhibition portraying the multiple facets of David Lynch’s art. It was the first time that the artist had exhibited such an extensive number of paintings, photographs, drawings, experimental films, and sound creations.

His art echoes his films in theme and aesthetic, yet offers viewers a fresh and more intimate glimpse into his singular universe. The book also contains several essays that analyze his artworks, as well as a conversation with Lynch, interviewed within the context of the show.

The book that accompanied the exhibition unveiled David Lynch’s little known yet highly prolific artistic production, which started even before he became a director and has rarely been shown. It is a reference work that covers the artist’s different fields of creation: painting, photography, drawing, and motion pictures. His visual creations are aesthetic echoes of his films that offer a new look at his work and the opportunity to plunge deeper into his personal world.

The book is accompanied by an interview with David Lynch (on CD), in which the artist provides a veritable commentary on his works.

Genres: Art, Film, Photography, Nonfiction

443 pages, Hardcover + CD

First published April 15, 2007

About the author

Various is the correct author for any book with multiple unknown authors, and is acceptable for books with multiple known authors, especially if not all are known or the list is very long (over 50).

If an editor is known, however, Various is not necessary. List the name of the editor as the primary author (with role "editor"). Contributing authors' names follow it.

Note: WorldCat is an excellent resource for finding author information and contents of anthologies.

Reviews

[Joshua · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is, in my mind, probably the comprehensive collection to track the career of David Lynch ax a visual artist. While there are a few of his paintings and drawings that are left out of this collection, this book is absolutely marvelous containing interviews, reviews, films stills, sketches, drawings, sculptures, paintings, and photography by and about Lynch over the course of his career giving fans of his art and films, as well as appreciators of the visual arts a beautiful compendium to sample. I open this book and will take time to just stare the images and let them sink into my brain enjoying every small detail that went into the composition of these images.

Absolutely wonderful.

[Andrei Mocuţa · Rating 5 out of 5]

469 illustrations of total madness.

[Francis Cooke]

"Kierkegaard was, I think, the first to show that one can position oneself within a radical conflict for all eternity, precisely through its [the conflict's] eternal repetition. Lynch, in my opinion, does exactly that. Although he does make different films and paint different paintings, he always reproduces the same conflict, and the same danger always looms, as well as the same opportunity for salvation. This insistence on repetition definitively characterises Lynch's films. His work originates in a profound and very modern distrust for any gesture of final reconciliation."

I'm currently binging a LOT of books about Lynch's films, but the above - from Boris Groys discussing Lynch's art and photos in this collection - is easily the best distillation of how I feel about his films. A good book!

[David · Rating 3 out of 5]

I like bees and my friend, Jack Nance - I might have told you - worked in a hotel as nightwatchman and opened a door of a vacant room and found like 10,000 dead bees and sent me a Kleenex box filled with them And then I made my bee board from those bees and it started with the Ricky Board.

[I am Clitterbox]

From Santa

[Catherine Corman · Rating 2 out of 5]

I like the nowhere part of America...They're little truthful places, but they're not obvious.

-David Lynch