From Suburbia It Scuttled: The World of Tim Burton at the Design Museum

Strange characters with elongated limbs, pale of face and dark of hair; patchwork bodies and blades for fingers; fog-choked forests and darkened cities: worlds of shadow-strewn wonder patiently await behind the opaque veil of an overplayed reality. While primarily renowned for his film direction and animation on such cult classics as Edward Scissorhands, The Nightmare Before Christmas, Corpse Bride, and Beetlejuice, Tim Burton possesses an undeniably distinct style, infusing whatever medium he so chooses to work in with a gloriously dark whimsy. And those mediums are varied and vast: painting, drawing, photography, poetry, and diorama. But Burton’s oeuvre outside of film is often overlooked, overshadowed in the public mind by what has previously unfolded upon the silver screen. In an impeccably felicitous gesture, the Design Museum in London opened the doors to The World of Tim Burton a little under a week before Halloween. Collecting six hundred pieces from five decades of furious creativity, the exhibition showcases Burton’s singular vision, from the suburbia of his youth to his Hollywood-beget present day omnipresence.

Percepto, c. 1996–1997. © Tim Burton

In the northeast of the Greater Los Angeles metropolitan area lies the San Fernando Valley. Tucked away from the glitz and glamour of Hollywood and the inherent seediness of Downtown L.A., the city of Burbank sprawls, safe and benign, sterile and bored, at the foothills of the Verdugo Mountains in the Valley’s southeastern end. It is typical cookie-cutter suburbia, with rows of neat stucco houses with perfectly manicured lawns, smiling housewives, industrious husbands, and carefree kids. It was here, in the summer of 1958, that Timothy Walter Burton was born.

Tim Burton, Untitled (Edward Scissorhands), 1990. EDWARD SCISSORHANDS ©1990. 20th Century Studios, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

An introverted child, young Tim yearned from an escape from the mundane existence that was offered him. But for all the banality of his surroundings, they did allow him room to dream. Burton sought respite by falling into fictional worlds, illustrating, drawing, and making short films with a Super 8 camera in the backyard. He would also seek refuge from the inherent insipidness of everyday suburbia in nearby Valhalla Memorial Park Cemetery, a boneyard that sat forever waiting at the end of his native Evergreen Street.

These formative years would resound throughout Burton’s career. A photograph taken in 1967 exists of nine-year-old Tim, dressed as a skeleton in a Halloween costume he designed, and his mother made, next to his brother in witch’s hat get-up. This skeleton possesses a longer-than-usual neck – which gives the illusion of a tall and gangly physique, topped by a round, bone-white head with button-like eyes and stitched mouth, bearing an uncanny resemblance to The Nightmare Before Christmas’ protagonist, Jack Skellington. Burton would also repeatedly sketch a character with extremely elongated fingers and messy dark hair, who would eventually evolve into none other than Edward Scissorhands.

Remnants of a suburban youth. Photograph by Rob Harris for the Design Museum, London.

The inspiration that Burton found in fiction during his youth would also possess longevity in terms of influence. Traces of silent horror films, Universal monster movies, and Hammer Horror, all of which Burton was a fervent fan of, can be easily discernible in many titles found in the director’s cinematic oeuvre. Artifacts exist of this youthful inspiration, such as a flyer that Burton designed for a Burbank Police Youth Band horror movie evening. The World of Tim Burton has done an admirable job of collecting these various pieces of ephemera and displaying them to the art-going public. Early storyboards, illustrated pages from picture books, class notes from Burton’s time at The California Institute of the Arts, grace the walls and display cabinets of the exhibition. Perhaps it seems somewhat redundant to pore over such vestiges of the burgeoning suburban artist, but behind their ostensible nostalgic novelty, lies immense importance. These early pieces provide a tangible link to the humble beginnings of the charmingly eldritch world of Tim Burton. And when one views them as they first enter the exhibition space, they are unwittingly being set-up to holistically understand all that comes after. Ever since childhood, Burton has felt more at ease expressing himself visually. And every project he works on begins with drawings, allowing him to convey his vision in the purest sense. The concept art that Burton created for projects that never reached fruition during his time working as an apprentice at Walt Disney Studios during the early ‘80s, show the discovery of a style that would stay with the artist forevermore, creating a direct link to the concept art for projects that actually did manage to reach fruition. Viewers can follow this aesthetical breadcrumb trail, which leads to such delights as costumes used in film and television: the indisputably-iconic costume donned by Johnny Depp in 1990’s Edward Scissorhands becomes a physical manifestation of what lies lovingly scrawled upon the page.

Costume designer Colleen Atwood’s iconic Scissorhands piece. Photograph by Rob Harris for the Design Museum, London.

Tim Burton’s work holds an appeal that is all-enduring, spanning multiple generations, and imbedding itself in respective countercultures. This timeless appeal, coupled with the recent resurgence in Burton’s popularity due to his work on the television series Wednesday and recent sequel to 1988’s beloved Beetlejuice, and the exhibition’s not-quite-All-Hallow’s Eve opening, resulted in The World of Tim Burton having the biggest advance ticket sales in the museum’s thirty-five-year history.

Tim Burton visits ‘The World of Tim Burton’, at the Design Museum in London. Photograph by Matt Crossick/PA Media Assignments.

“It’s a strange thing, to put 50 years of art and your life on view for everyone to see, especially when that was never the original purpose.”

The World of Tim Burton at London’s Design Museum is the final incarnation in a decade-long tour that started in Prague, although its genesis stretches a little further back with an exhibition at The Museum of Modern Art in New York City in 2009. It runs until April 21, 2025, after which it will no longer be accessible from the Land of the Living.

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