to;dr: just rewatched Mulholland Drive. It’s so deep at so many levels that I needed to write this.
Picasso: obviously knew how to paint. Once he dominated that, he started to deconstruct the art. I’m not an expert on painting so I won’t develop, but you can say that his following works were an evolution on that art
David Lynch: obviously he knew how to direct a classical story and script. He has two masterpieces without dealing with the surrealism that came later (I’m talking about The Elephant Man and The Straight Story). He knew how to deal with the classical standards that the cinema exposes. But on most of his works (I think that Lost Highway and Mulholland Drive are his peak) he goes a level over that. He exposes feelings and situations in a way that are implicit on so many layers compared on what is being exposed that you can only be amazed on what’s being displayed , although you cannot full understand it.
Twin peaks exposes the good vs bad duality in an amazing way. Lost Highway does the same with the concept of remorse. And Mulholland Drive, his top, exposes so many things on so many layers, from the lost love, to the pursue of success and happiness to a portrait of the capitalist society (and you could even frame it into situations on today’s society that didn’t existed when it was launched) that you understand the situation of “I didn’t understood this but I liked it”.