FILM / BOOK REVIEW: David Lynch and The Art Spirit

It was THE art book of the 1960s. All the cool kids were reading it.

[I wrote this review a couple months ago and was waiting for a good time to publish it. I guess this would be the time.]

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David Lynch: The Art Life (2016)   Directed by Jon Nguyen.  Janus Films

The Art Spirit (1923)   By Robert Henri.    Basic Books

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I recently watched the 2016 documentary “David Lynch:  The Art Life”.  It focused on Lynch’s early years:  his childhood, his difficulties at school, his art student period, up to the making of his first feature film Eraserhead (1977).

I like these “early years” biographies.  The ones that stop right at the breakthrough moment.  After that, we pretty much know what happened.

It’s those formative years that give you a real account of who the person was and where they came from. 

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I especially like stories where the artist must travel a long road to achieve their artistic goals. People who begin their lives in the most un-artistic environments. People who are the opposite of nepo-babies, who have no connection to the creative industries and little understanding of what they are up against.

That seems to be the case with David Lynch.  He was born in Montana in 1946. His father—a research scientist for the US Department of Agriculture—was moved around during David’s childhood for his job. The Lynch family mostly lived in the Mountain West region and then in Virginia and North Carolina.

The documentary repeats the often told story of how a childhood classmate mentioned to David that his father was an “artist” and how at that very instant, upon hearing just that one word, Lynch’s entire life changed.  He decided he would be an “artist” too, though he had no real concept of what that would entail.

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