David Lynch: Lithos

by Patrice Forest (Contributor), Dominique Païni

The workshop of Item Editions is sequestered in a back courtyard off the Rue du Montparnasse in Paris, where artists from all around the world have lithographs made on Solnhofener stones. Here, with the help of the historic presses that have printed masterworks by such artists as Picasso, Matisse and Miró, a durable artistic continues today. Filmmaker, photographer, painter and printmaker David Lynch (born 1946) was captivated by this place and its history, when he first chanced across it in 2007: "I fell in love," he declared. Since his earliest experiments with zinc plates and prints in black and red, Lynch has continued to labor away at Item Editions, recently producing large black-and-white lithographs by drawing directly onto the stone (rather than using the medium to create multiples of pre-existing drawings), experimenting with textures to draw figurative imagery out of abstract patterns, and adding captions to further elucidate their themes. The content of these lithographs clusters around themes familiar to Lynch love, eroticism, dreams and death. David Lithos collects all of Lynch's work in this genre. A conversation between Dominique Païni, former director of the French Cinematheque and Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, and the artist, provides further insight into Lynch's process.

Genres: Art, Film

192 pages, Hardcover

First published August 31, 2010

Reviews

[Blog on Books · Rating 3 out of 5]

While most of the world knows David Lynch from his high-profile, dark and mysterious (and some would say, art) films, what is less known is that Lynch is much more of a renaissance man, among other things having trained at Washington’s Corcoran School of Art and Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts. In fact, Lynch was a painter before he became a cinematographer.

With that backdrop in mind, it is curious to witness the auteur going back to his earlier incarnation to produce an extensive series of lithographs inspired by his tenure at the famed studio workshop of Item Editions off the rue du Montparnasse in Paris. The studio has previously been used by such luminaries as Picasso and Joan Miro and the effect on Lynch is profound.

The 192 page coffee-table format book depicts the largely black and white lithographs which feature images of bodies, stories and quotes depicting dark and moody pieces that while unique on their own, are equally evocative of the work of people like Edvard Munch in the late 1800’s to Don Van Vliet in the 1970s through the 1990s. (Ironically, Lynch appears briefly in Anton Corbijn’s thirteen minute Beefheart documentary “Some Yo-Yo Stuff.”) The stone based prints are displayed in full frame mode with several pieces emphasized in detail view as well. There is also a smaller selection of earlier, square-format prints in black, white and red that were the subject of a separate show in 2007.

In addition to the prints, a short but revealing interview with Parisian writer, film critic and curator Dominique Paini (Art Press) draws the comparison between the lithographs and Lynch’s films, particularly in relation to both the darkness and storytelling of each medium. An interesting new work.

[Tom · Rating 4 out of 5]

David Lynch is probably the most amazing living artist at this moment, his lithographs share another dimension of his universe. More into the mundane, yet with a typical layer of "demented nostalgia" which is my favourite way to describe Lynch's oeuvre. The exhibition was wonderful and this book is a great souvenir/map to bigger fishes.