Review: Design Museum's Tim Burton Blockbuster Is A World Of Pure Imagination
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Last Updated 23 October 2024
The animator, illustrator, director and all-round spinner of contemporary comic gothic Tim Burton has not always enjoyed surefire success.
One of the first things to greet you at the Design Museum's World of Tim Burton show — which opens on Friday 25 October — is The Giant Zlig, a hand-drawn children's book that an 18-year-old Burton posted off to Disney in they hope they'd be interested. In amongst the fledgling illustrator's pages of colourful monster grotesques is a rejection letter suggesting Burton's work is too derivative of Dr Seuss. "Keep up the good work, and good luck," wrote back Disney.
Keep up the good work Burton most certainly did, although he may not have needed the luck. In the next decade, his career skyrocketed; he wound up of course, not only working with Disney, but by 1989 had made a Batman movie, and was on the cusp of minting his very own genre, the 'Burtonesque'.
Burton admits he finds poring over his own past projects awkward — "like seeing your dirty laundry put on the walls". This might also have something to do with the cookie cutter nature of a show, which started over a decade ago in Prague, and has been trotting the globe ever since.
London is the very final place to get The World of Tim Burton — admittedly taking the sheen off things a touch — although he's suggested this is his favourite staging: "like walking around a weird, wonderful fun house." And it's difficult to imagine many Burton fans will be disenchanted by the curated journey from Burton's mundane suburban upbringing in Burbank, California (what he calls "Anywhere, USA") onto which he projected monsters and misfits, and created some of the most memorable movies of the past few decades.
Edward Scissorhand's hands. Maquettes from The Nightmare Before Christmas. A model of the "organic and sinister" (Burton's note on how it should appear) Batmobile. A trio of Oompa Loompas from 2005's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. It's all here — a world of pure imagination. Not merely time-lining the artistic polymath's career, many objects also afford glimpses into how his movies are produced — Corpse Bride figures are stripped down to their deposable metal skeletons; a costume from the current Wednesday series is broken down and explained (the shirt was sourced from a vintage Carnaby Street store).
For all the Hollywood props, Burton's pizzazz as an illustrator is what burns brightest — his style a carnivalesque mash-up of Edward Gorey, Ralph Steadman and Dr Seuss (OK, so Burton IS derivative, but he's also learned from the best). One sketch of an axe-wielding clown lowering over a decapitated body encapsulates an unmatched ability to bridge the childlike and outright horror. If he'd've settled for comics and children's books, Burton would probably still have earned a London retrospective by now. Instead, his relentless imagination has spewed out so much, you forget he even did some of this stuff: the widely-panned 2019 live action remake of Dumbo, anyone? Now THAT Disney should've rejected...
Towards the end of The World of Tim Burton, there's another blast of concepts that were chewed up during production and never made it out the other end — including Pirates, featuring a motley crew of impossibly-contorted salty dogs. But with 32,000 ticket sales under its belt before even opening, this exhibition is already an assured hit for Burton and the Design Museum. Someone should pair it with the museum's other current big-hitter, Barbie, and create a 'Barbie-Burton' twofer ticket. Talk about a blockbuster.
The World of Tim Burton, Design Museum, 25 October 2024-21 April 2025
