The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) will offer Tim Burton Tour Nights, private group tours of the exhibition Tim Burton, on selected nights during the run of the exhibition, November 22, 2009, to April 26, 2010. Tim Burton Tour Nights will include a one-hour VIP group tour of the exhibition, after the Museum closes to the public, and a reserved preferred seat at that night’s Tim Burton film screening.
Tim Burton. (American, b. 1958), Untitled (Romeo and Juliet). 1981–1984. Pen and ink, marker, and colored pencil on paper, 12 x 16″ (30.5 x 40.6 cm). Private Collection. © 2009 Tim Burton
The exhibition Tim Burton will bring together over 700 examples of rarely or never-before-seen drawings, paintings, storyboards, moving-image works, puppets, maquettes, costumes, and cinematic ephemera, and includes an extensive film series spanning Burton’s 27-year career.
The exhibition explores how Burton has taken inspiration from sources in pop culture and reinvented Hollywood genre filmmaking as an expression of personal vision, garnering him an international audience of fans and influencing a generation of young artists working in film, video, and graphics.
Tim Burton is one of the last people you’d imagine would become one of the most acclaimed directors in the world. He is an introverted, unassuming person. His career got underway at the most famous animation studio in Hollywood, he landed his first directing gig because of a bootleg tape of a short film that was never released, and (for a while, at least) he had a movie in the top-ten grossers of all time.
Timothy William Burton was born August 25, 1958 in Burbank, California. Burbank may not ring as many bells as Hollywood, but it is the home to many film and television studios — NBC, Warner Brothers, Disney, and others. Burbank was quintessential 1950s American suburbia, a world in which the shy, artistic Tim was not quite in step with the shiny happy people surrounding him. He was not particularly good in school, and was not a bookworm. Instead, he found his pleasure in painting, drawing, and movies. He loved monster movies: Godzilla, the Hammer horror films from Great Britain, the work of Ray Harryhausen. One of his heroes was actor Vincent Price.
Tim Burton Tour Nights are limited to 25 people per tour. Tickets are $75 per person ($65 for MoMA members), and must be reserved in advance by contacting MoMA Group Services at (212) 708-9685 or [email protected] . Tickets will go on sale this fall.
Organized in collaboration with Burton, the exhibition presents artworks and objects drawn primarily from the artist’s personal archive, as well as studio archives and the private collections of Burton’s collaborators. Included are little-known drawings, paintings, and sculptures created in the spirit of contemporary Pop Surrealism, as well as work generated during the conception and production of his films, such as original The Nightmare Before Christmas and Corpse Bride puppets; Edward Scissorhands, Batman Returns, and Sleepy Hollow costumes; and even severed-head props from Mars Attacks! Also featured are the first public display of his student and earliest nonprofessional films; his long-unseen television adaptation Hansel and Gretel (1983); examples of his work for the flash animation internet series The World of Stainboy (2000); a selection of the artist’s oversized Polaroid prints; graphic art and texts for non-film projects, like The Melancholy Death of Oyster Boy and Other Stories (1997) and Tim Burton’s Tragic Toys for Girls and Boys (2003) collectible figure series; and art from a number of early unrealized projects. Additionally, a selection of international and domestic posters from Burton’s films will be on display in the theater lobby galleries.
The Museum of Modern Art 11 West 53 Street New York, NY 10019 (212) 708-9400
www.moma.org
