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The demon thinker of Hollywood: Tim Burton unmasked

Words:
Pamela Buxton

The Design Museum probes the inner worlds of the cult film director in a revealing display of his tropes, suburban upbringing and the critical role of his drawings

Tim Burton at The World of Tim Burton exhibition at the Design Museum.
Tim Burton at The World of Tim Burton exhibition at the Design Museum. Credit: Matt Crossick_PA Media Assignments

Tim Burton’s suburban beginnings in Burbank, LA, are a key presence in the Design Museum’s blockbuster new exhibition on the cult film director’s creative oeuvre, shown here through the lens of design. Pre-show sales of The World of Tim Burton set new records for the museum, and visitors are rewarded with a deep dive into his artistic processes on films including Batman (1989), Edward Scissorhands, (1990) and Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (2007), with iconic items such as the famous Scissorhands blades and Catwoman’s slinky costume, as well as an array of puppets, props and Burton’s own idiosyncratic drawings.

Suburbia is evoked visually in the first exhibition space, where pitched roof structures in pastel colours recall the suburbs of his childhood, an experience that clearly affected the introverted young Burton, who immersed himself in gothic horror and monster films, and visits to the local cemetery. All of this helped fuel his singular creative vision over the following decades.

The impact of growing up in American suburbia was ‘profound’ for Burton, according to Design Museum curator Maria McLintock, who adapted the touring exhibition for the London show. She describes him as ‘really punching back’ at the monotony and regularity by being ‘super creative’. This idea of the standardised suburb as both conflicting with and inspiring individuality is further explored in the exhibition catalogue by Iain Borden, professor of architecture and urban design at University College London.

‘Suburbia, it seems, is not just a constraint but also a creative force,’ he concludes.

  • Surrounded, 1996.
    Surrounded, 1996. Credit: Tim Burton
  • Tim Burton, Untitled (Edward Scissorhands), 1990. Edward Scissorhands.
    Tim Burton, Untitled (Edward Scissorhands), 1990. Edward Scissorhands. Credit: 1990. 20th Century Studios, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
  • Percepto, c. 1996–1997.
    Percepto, c. 1996–1997. Credit: Tim Burton
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For McLintock, architecture is often the protagonist in Burton’s approach to the ‘world building’ of every project, pointing to the Po-Mo architecture of the Maitlands’ house in Beetlejuice, and how that house produces ‘very particular social relations’. Meanwhile, the Gaudi and New York City-influenced skyline for Gotham City, she said, really set the tone for the Batman franchise.

‘Architecture can often serve as a mode of comparison where dualities really come to the fore,’ she says, highlighting extremities between ‘what’s normal and what’s not normal, what’s light and what’s dark’.

The exhibition first explores Burton’s childhood and formative years in Burbank including his studies at California Institute of the Arts and his early career at Disney in the 1980s, before moving onto his stop motion work and life action films. The design process behind 11 of these plus the television series Wednesday are featured here. Throughout, his vivid, expressionistic drawings are at the core of everything, and are full of familiar Burtonesque elements such as long spindly limbs, exaggerated features and crazily messy hair, monochrome stripes, and stitched scars and costumes, as well as an array of fantastical creatures and aliens. For him, drawing is clearly ‘very emotional and personal’ and has to have ‘an emotional core’, as he said at one of the exhibition’s opening events.

  • Untitled (Boy Series). 2009. Marker and watercolour on paper. Private Collection.
    Untitled (Boy Series). 2009. Marker and watercolour on paper. Private Collection. Credit: Tim Burton
  • Untitled (Creature Series), 1994.
    Untitled (Creature Series), 1994. Credit: Tim Burton
  • Untitled (Dogs in space), 1998.
    Untitled (Dogs in space), 1998. Credit: Tim Burton
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It's fascinating to see the recreation of Burton’s studio – paints, pencils, pastels, books, odd figures, pin-up boards, with no wires or screens to be seen. He is, as he confessed, a bit of a technophobe – ‘I find strangely that my soul resists it’.

The sheer craft involved in creating the worlds is explored through the puppets, costumes and sets – Burton clearly loves working with people who work with the handmade, and the exhibition showcases the work of stop-motion animators Mackinnon and Saunders. It's a real insight into this process in particular, and the use of moving armatures and replacement parts to painstakingly achieve the movement and expression required.

The live action films also reference the role of costume designers such as Colleen Atwood and production designers including Bo Welch on Edward Scissorhands and the late Royal College of Art-trained Anton Furst on Batman. For Edward Scissorhands, Burton’s crew took over a real suburban cul-de-sac in Florida and dressed it in the pastels required for the film. Atwood’s use of straps and buckles for Edward’s costume represents, we learn, his mobile prison and how he is an assemblage of spare parts. Curator Maria McLintock says that he isn’t a director whose interested in depicting historical reality. Instead, it’s about creating the feeling of a place – when filming Sleepy Hollow, production designer Rick Heinrichs constructed a massive Tree of the Dead despite filming in a forest. Throughout the exhibition, it’s particularly striking how influential Burton’s initial drawings are on the final designs.

  • The World of Tim Burton exhibition installation at the Design Museum.
    The World of Tim Burton exhibition installation at the Design Museum. Credit: Rob Harris for the Design Museum.
  • The World of Tim Burton exhibition installation at the Design Museum.
    The World of Tim Burton exhibition installation at the Design Museum. Credit: Rob Harris for the Design Museum.
  • The World of Tim Burton exhibition installation at the Design Museum.
    The World of Tim Burton exhibition installation at the Design Museum. Credit: Rob Harris for the Design Museum.
  • The World of Tim Burton exhibition installation at the Design Museum.
    The World of Tim Burton exhibition installation at the Design Museum. Credit: Rob Harris for the Design Museum.
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A gallery of his drawings, plus 3D incarnations of some of the quirkiest designs, lead to a look at how the Burtonesque style has influenced other creatives, including his collaborations with the late fashion designer Alexander McQueen, photographer Tim Walker, and American rock band The Killers.

The London show is the last iteration of the Burton exhibition, which has been touring since 2014. Next year, it’s the turn of another film director, Wes Anderson, whose retrospective will open in November 2025.

The World of Tim Burton, Design Museum, until 21 April 2025