David Lynch, the American filmmaker who created an unnerving vision of the world and plumbed the fears and desires in his country’s unconscious, has died at 78. His death was announced by his family on social media, with no cause given; Lynch had been diagnosed with emphysema in 2020 and last year spoke publicly of being effectively housebound.
Lynch belongs to the pantheon of artists whose name defines not just a style but a worldview. The enveloping images and sounds of his work — especially Eraserhead (1977), Blue Velvet (1986), Mulholland Drive (2001) and the TV series Twin Peaks (1990) — breathe with the odd, the unseemly, the freakish and the savage, all lurking on the flipside of daily life. Here was a beaming devotee of both Bob’s Big Boy milkshakes and Francis Bacon.
He was born on January 20 1946 in Missoula, Montana, to a research scientist for the US Department of Agriculture and an English teacher. His upbringing has the glow of cosy Americana: a high-ranking member of the Boy Scouts of America, he watched his father troop out to work wearing a grey-green 10-gallon hat. After some years in Spokane, Washington, the family resettled in the east, where Lynch embraced painting after meeting a friend’s father, a full-time artist.