David Lynch: The Unified Field – Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts
So yes, this was a show at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, and indeed the first major US retrospective of Lynch’s artistic output. He was a student here many moons ago, although he did not finish his course, and much is made of the influence of then gritty Philadelphia on his work. The exhibition text tells us that “Philadelphia gave Lynch exactly what he needed at the right time in his development as an artist. His experiences in the city instilled images and sensations that have come out in unusual ways throughout his career.” His art is too surreal for this influence to be literal, there are no recognisable Philadelphia street scenes or landmarks, so it is more a feeling of ever present danger and barely hidden violence that the Academy ascribes to his time spent in the city. In this sense the exhibition did give me an insight into a side of the city which has either disappeared or which I did not see, and which was definitely a counterpoint to the very patriotic,a Founding Father’s Day I had been having until then.
It’s not often I’ve seen an exhibition come with a parental warning, but PAFA very kindly suggested that parents preview this one before bringing in their children. It was not an exhibition which tended towards the explicit, but there is, as mentioned, a sense of violence to many of the works, and also a tendency to focus on what the exhibition text calls ‘ejection’. I would call it vomiting: there was a fair amount of vomiting in the exhibition, including a student work from 1967 entitled ‘Six Men Getting Sick’. Ok, so I didn’t like everything on display. But I didn’t bring any children I needed to be concerned for, so it was ok in the end.
Much is also made in the exhibition of the fact that painting has been a constant throughout his artistic career. The point seems to have been to justify the Academy’s choice and switch him from filmmaker/artist to artist/filmmaker, and I can see the reasoning behind this choice, but I did find it slightly heavy handed, with many references in the wall texts along with a tendency to refer to his work in a way that could include both film and art. I felt the works on display did a good job of holding their own without this assistance: there were some interesting mixed media pieces, some more subtle (and to me more visually appealing) works on paper, and overall a consistency of artistic vision that has gone some way to convincing me that Lynch isn’t just trying to trick me into a cinema to watch films with no narrative plots. I absolutely would not have gone to see the show if it had not been part of my ticket, but I’m glad I did, and I will stop complaining about David Lynch quite so much in future. Surely one of the aims of an exhibition is to educate and change ideas, and if so then PAFA can chalk up at least one success.
