The art form David Lynch claims has “pretty much ruined the world”
The magic and mystery of the mind of David Lynch cannot be compared to any other creative in the realm of cinema, with the idiosyncratic artist having made some of the most curious creations ever seen in the medium. Toying with the dreamworld and the nightmarish possibilities of the subconscious, Lynch has baffled audiences time and time again with iconic movies like Mulholland Drive and Blue Velvet, but is also known for his multidisciplinary talents.
As a painter, visual artist, musician and actor, Lynch has spread his influence across several facets of the creative industry, demonstrating just how dedicated he is to the artistic process. So inspiring was his work at the turn of the century that Sony sought his unique mind to market their revolutionary Playstation 2 console, with Lynch delivering exactly the kind of mind-bending commercial you would expect from the filmmaker.
Yet, despite being a lover of all things artistic, there is one creative outlet that he utterly despises, revealing his hate of graffiti while discussing the possibility of making his unmade passion project, Ronnie Rocket, back in 2013. Stating that the ambitious movie, which tells the story of a teenage dwarf who must be regularly plugged into mains electricity to prevent him from death, was still possibly going to be made, he added that the world had changed considerably since he devised the concept back in the 1970s.
“Ronnie Rocket is set in the world of the smokestack industry, and this is a world that doesn’t exist anymore,” he told Bomb Magazine, “It was still really alive in the 1950s and 1960s, but this industry is going away. And then a thing happened. This thing called graffiti. Graffiti to me is one of the worst things that has happened to the world. It completely ruined the mood of places. Graffiti kills the possibility to go back in time and have the buildings be as they were. Cheap storm windows and graffiti have ruined the world for Ronnie Rocket”.
His take on the urban art form, which is often used to reclaim gentrified areas and express unabashed creativity in a public place, is a little surprising, but considering the director’s passion for the relationship between time, space and architecture, it becomes a little clearer why he is so against its presence.
His stance on the matter certainly hasn’t changed over the years either, later stating at his art exhibition in Australia in 2015: “Graffiti to me has pretty much ruined the world. It’s ruined it for film. When you go to a place to film, everything is graffitied so if you don’t want it, you have to paint it out…So much great architecture is graffitied over, so many great train stations, factories, are graffitied over and it’s a horrible, horrible thing. Trees have gone away and graffiti has taken their place”.
Take a look at more of Lynch’s opinions regarding the art world below, where he delves into the relationship between creative expression and depression.
