The City of Absurdity   The City of Absurdity
I M A G E S  – coffee table book by David Lynch 1994

 
Nudes and Smoke Postmodern Mood Structures Everybody Loves Somebody Sometime

About the Book | Jacket Cover | Content | Pictures | Further Information

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  About the Book

David Lynch

"I've got a real lot of beautiful industrial landscapes. And I'm real interested in dental hygiene, so I'm going to have a chapter on that. Maybe something on fictitious archaeology: I'd like to bury some things, then wait a little while and dig them up. I like to photograph plastic people in little scenes. Then I might have a chapter on spark plugs. Kind of amazing things, spark plugs; our lives revolve around them."

"Well, I was very interested in dental hygiene because as a kid,you know...soft, bad teeth and always visiting the dentist. I have a dentist now, Dr. Chin in Santa Monica, who I think is the world's greatest dentist."
"I enjoy the dental, uh..the different machines and textures of dentistry and so I did some photos to reflect that enjoyment."

clayhead with chees turkey and ants"I had ants in my kitchen, and they are little, small what they call I think sugar ants, but they are coming in I think for water. I made a small head of cheese and turkey. I put a ball of cheese and turkey together and then cased it with clay, and mounted it on a small coathanger. I made an opening in the mouth, I exposed some turkey in the eye and in the ears. Now the ants found the coathanger, began climbing in for four days and nights non-stop and emptied the entire head of turkey and cheese."

"Kits started in London, I bought a fish and cut it up to...what the idea of...like an airplane kit that you buy, you assemble the parts."
"[I got a fish] At the fish market..."
"...assembled it, took it home to dis-assemble it, photograph it, to make it look like something one could put together and enjoy."
"A Fish Kit. And then I did a Chicken Kit in Mexico."
"Yeah, there's a Duck Kit but it didn't turn out too well.
"Uh, the photograph...there were so many parts and it didn't quite catch the details of the small parts."

"The Ricky Board is my idea, right or wrong, of what the Japanese might do to organize controlled accidents in a formal environment. "

Jack Nance

"I'll tell you, Lynch is a dynamite painter. Self-indulgent, like I said. His canvases are like nine feet tall. He puts all the brushes together and mixes up the paint, and when itīs ready to hang up on the wall, he puts it up there and lets people make anything of it that they want to."

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  From the jacket cover

"Images shows the progression of Lynch's avant-garde style of filmmaking ­ from his very first short films, to his status as the ultimate cult director with Eraserhead, to the commercial successes of The Elephant Man and Blue Velvet, and the creation of his television series Twin Peaks, which made it into ­ and forever altered ­ the mainstream. Here are many familiar scenes: the gasmasked Dennis Hopper in Blue Velvet, the squalling baby from Eraserhead, Dune's octopus-faced interstellar navigators, Nicolas Cage singing "Love Me Tender" to Laura Dern in Wild at Heart, and Kyle MacLachlan as FBI agent Dale Cooper.

Much of the book, however, is composed of the images Lynch has kept to himself, and these are as fascinating and possibly more bizarre than any of his films. In addition to the stills from his movies, TV series, and theater work, are private, personal, never-before-seen paintings, drawings, sculpture, photography, short works of fiction, and organic art. This is the artwork David creates for himself and his closest friends: photographs of his unusual obsessions from spark plugs and industrial wastelands to dental surgery and bald women, suburban snowmen, and biological artwork, such as "The Fish Kit."

Images is a lavish exploration of Lynch's private world where his restless creativity knows no limits and where the perverse, disturbing, and erotic are the norm. It is an exclusive glimpse into the mind and inner life of a man many consider to be possessed by genius."

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  Content

Lynch's coffee table book consists of two sections, the first containing film stills and behind-the-scenes shots, the second paintings sculptures and photographs:

Part 1 ­ Moving Images: Fire Walk With Me, Industrial Symphony, Wild at Heart, Twin Peaks, The Cowboy and the Frenchman, Blue Velvet, Dune, The Elephant Man, Eraserhead, Alphabet & The Grandmother, The Amputee.

Part 2 ­ Images: Paintings and drawings, Ricky Boards and Bee Boards, Industrial, Organic Phenomena, Fish Kit, Chicken Kit, Snowmen from Boise, Postmodern Mood Structures, Nudes and Smoke, Distributors, Spark Plugs, Meaningless Conversations, Dental Hygiene.

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  Further Information

Some images from the book

bookcover order the book from amazon.com
for $28.00 (Hardcover)

Paintings And Drawings Page
Paintings and Drawings by David Lynch that are not included in IMAGES.

Talking Art Interview
David Lynch talks about his work as a painter

An Interview with David Lynch
from a spanish exhibition catalogue

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back to David Lynch page
© Mike Hartmann
thecityofabsurdity@yahoo.com