Tim Burton - L'exposition
7 March - 5 August 2012 @ La Cinémathèque
written by Susie Kahlich and Brian Clark
In 2009, curators Ron Magliozzi and Jenny He of the Museum of Modern Art in New York (MOMA) decided that what the world needs now is a full retrospective of the work of American filmmaker Tim Burton. Rooting through boxes and file cabinets and even Burton’s childhood home, the two intrepid curators dragged out for display everything from childhood illustrations to high school projects to rejection letters to script notes, accompanied by special works commissioned of Burton specifically for the show and other props and ephemera from Burton’s films. The exhibit was such a hit that Burton, Magliozzi and He, with MoMA’s backing, decided to take their show on the road, aiming for a single European location to remount it and introduce Burton’s world to his fans on the Continent. Burton chose Paris, and La Cinématheque Française, who opened the show with great fanfare on 7 March.
Tim Burton’s fetishes, obsessions and stylistic influences aren’t much of a secret at this point. Anybody who has seen even one or two of his films already knows that Burton’s is a brain fueled by Gothic and German Expressionist sensibilities, 50’s B-movie nostalgia, melodrama, and gleeful, juvenile humor. With a career spanning almost 30 years, Burton’s distinct visual style and quirky storytelling have made such films as Beetlejuice, Edward Scissorhands and Nightmare Before Christmas downright iconic.
But while Burton’s style is admirably bizarre and often engaging, it’s hardly mysterious, and the artwork on display here (some of which dates back to his high school years) never diverges much from what we expect. Paradoxically though, the consistency and sheer volume of work proves rewarding on a deeper level; by the end of the exhibit it’s hard not to be impressed and even inspired by Burton’s tenacity, as well as the obvious joy he takes in creating. The exhibition itself is less of a display of all the cool stuff Burton has done, and more of a witness to the fascinating process of the evolution and development of an artist. Because whatever you think of his films, Burton is an artist in the true sense of the word: someone who cannot help but create, as evidence in the sheer volume of artifacts on display.
The exhibition begins in an appropriately carnivalesque fashion with a series of giant Polaroids taken by Burton. The subject matter are typically Burton-esque, but the real interest lies in the giant Polaroid camera Burton took them with. Only one of six in the world, the Big Polaroid actually takes instant big Polaroids – the perfect toy for the director of Pee Wee’s Big Adventure and a man who clearly still delights in being a kid.
The exhibit next funnels the viewer into another black-lit room featuring a carousel with characters inspired by the monsters in Beetlejuice, and created specifically for the exhibit. And here is the first taste of what, on the surface, appears to be a rather predictable retrospective of Burton’s whimsically twisted imaginings but, on further reflection, reveals something of Burton the Artist, a man who’s art is inspired by his own art, in the cyclical way art so often feeds upon itself.
Finally dark gives way to light, and visitors find themselves in an expansive room decked out floor to ceiling with paintings, drawings, poetry and short animations by Burton, as well as sculptural creatures brought into 3D existence based on old sketches. Certainly, you can try to examine all of the artifacts individually, but the room functions more effectively as a whole; a joyful, dizzying testament to just how deeply-rooted Burton’s influences and obsessions are.
The art ranges from giant canvases covered in dark colors and Jack Skellington heads to doodles on napkins and hotel stationary. The main aspect of Burton’s art here that doesn’t already dominate his films is a series of illustrated poems that owe as much to the playfulness of Dr. Seuss as they do to the macabre sensibility of Edgar Allen Poe (as noted by a Disney executive to whom a teenage Burton had sent the illustrated manuscript and who, rather gently as one can read in the letter on display, rejected it).
Eventually, the exhibition settles into a mostly chronological and incredibly thorough timeline of Burton’s life, including early films, abandoned projects and rejected illustrations, as well as community posters Burton created as a kid, doodles and notes from art classes, and early animations for Disney projects that Disney rejected as “too dark.”
The final, least expansive section consists of props, concept art, and occasionally script notes from each of Burton’s films. Here, what could have been a merely diverting collection of memorabilia for die-hard fans instead takes on a new dimension of clarity, when coupled with the staggering parallels to the art from previous rooms.
Burton developed his talents at California Institute of the Arts, a school specifically designed to develop apprentice animators for Disney. There’s even a wall of bizarre drawings he made during this period in order to keep from getting bored with the generic animation required of him. Also, his completely-unused concept-art for Disney’s The Black Cauldron would have probably terrified even parents who accompanied their children to the film.
From there, he went straight into the studio system with Pee Wee’s Big Adventure, and he hasn’t left since. And so perhaps we can thank the overwhelming normalcy of the mainstream studio system for spurring Burton to create such bizarre, iconic heroes as Edward Scissorhands and Beetlejuice.
Ultimately, the exhibition cultivates a portrait of Burton as an outsider who turned to art as a means of rebelling against the overwhelming stagnation and conformity of his suburban Burbank upbringing – the Goth misfit at Sunnydale High School, the weird punk kid at the junior prom, the dorky freak who could draw that the jocks both scorned and admired. And perhaps this hypothesis helps explain why Burton has held so tight to the same imagery and style for so many years.
For, while it’s never explicitly explored, it seems he never quite escaped this world of conformity that drove him to create in the first place. Burbankian influences appear in every one of his films. The picture-perfect, candy-colored housing development in Edward Scissorhands is a direct reference to Burbank itself, one of the first planned suburban developments, houses all of a type and streets laid out on a strict grid pattern, almost brutal in its conformity. The creepy, saucer-eyed child props in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory are clearly based on the Bob’s Big Boy, the original of which is still offering a giant burger to passing cars on Burbank Boulevard.
Whatever the reason though, Burton’s steadfast commitment to his strange world and his ability to push it into the mainstream is ultimately inspiring and kind of sweet, even if the imagery itself is rarely surprising at this point. During the press conference, when asked what a Tim Burton police drama would be like, the soft-spoken director mused that even when he tries to branch out, he always comes back to the same ideas and images, whether on purpose or not. And, given that one of the most important traits of any artist is the ability to be honest with themselves, and also, that Burton is damn good at what he does, who can really blame him?
The exhibit itself is an inspiring contemplation of what it takes to be an artist in the world: persistence in the face of rejection, commitment to a belief, courage to be different, and the intelligence to go where the love is. It’s telling that while these days Burton calls Notting Hill home (“I like weather,” he quipped when asked why he doesn’t live in Southern California), he chose Paris as the only location of his expo rather than the more obvious choice of London. “The French speak about film so lovingly. Even if they don’t like your movie, they still speak about it beautifully. But in London they don’t like me so much and they’re not very kind.” And La Cinématheque Française loves Tim Burton.
March 2012, Vingt Paris Magazine