Or, why I identify with Burton.
The scene through the window is gruesome. A small house that should be home to dolls at a dinner party or a friendly Labrador is instead the scene of a crime. A figurine of a boy stands inside the house next to a Christmas tree. A man’s legs jut out from an unseen back room, his toes pointing towards the sky like the Wicked Witch of the East. Christmas lights flicker on and off, and it is uncertainly whether the boy is pleased or disgusted at his discovery – or his conquest. Peering through the widow, viewers become voyeurs into the surreal world of Tim Burton.
The house is only one installation in the massive Tim Burton exhibit at MOMA, but it tells his entire story. To see the exhibit is to sit in Burton’s brain and watch his imagination at work. His signature characters – the sinewy figures with large melancholy eyes, the freakish, exaggerated creatures – all resemble reflections in funhouse mirrors: they are distorted and absurd yet intriguing nonetheless. They are victims of violence and horror, and they are full forlorn tenderness. It is this juxtaposition of the heartwarming and the gut wrenching defines the genius of Tim Burton.
Patrons enter the exhibit through a gaping mouth with teeth like ice picks fixed into the doorway. They go through a tunnel painted with black and white stripes as they journey to a strange netherworld. Through such innovative curatorial choices, the exhibit becomes an interactive experience instead of passive window-shopping.
Burton’s work spans from his teen years, when he created an anti-littering poster that was displayed on public busses, to present day figures depicting the nascent stages of his recognizable movie characters. While the blockbuster movie memorabilia has its place, it is the intimate watercolors on framed notebook pages and early doodles he likely never intended for the public eye that animate the exhibit.
A series of sketches from his days as an animator for Disney reveal the seeds for his future movies: a rough sketch of The Gardener – “he uses gardening utensils instead of hands” – is clearly an early allusion to Mr. Scissorhands. His earlier work also reveals sharp wit and a slightly perverse sense of humor: “Two people enjoying each other” is a sketch of a man and a woman chomping on each other’s fleshy bones. It’s as if Burton is saying, “Don’t take anything at face value. Things are not always as they seem.”
Burton is prolific, yet the bulk of his sketches are variations on a theme: Two young girls sitting alone at a dinner table, with only a spoon and fork hanging from the wall to keep them company. A skeletal figure pulling itself out through the mouth of a limp body that hangs like a wrinkled suit from its bones. Rooms of altered perspective in which the characters appear very small, and very, very alone. The freakish introvert, the misunderstood artist, the marginalized loner. These are the stock characters from which he has build the tragic heroes audiences know and love onscreen.
Yet from these characters – and Burton’s life– another motif emerges:
One can guess that Burton’s sense of being an outsider during a lonely childhood (the exhibit chronicles his early years growing up in Burbank, where he said he didn’t fit in) served as the wellspring of his creativity. Insight emerges from feeling misunderstood and alone, when the artist has only his imagination to contend with. Through his freakish figures, most notably Edward Scissorhands, Burton reminds viewers that everyone sees their flaws as glaring distortions; it is incongruous self-perceptions that prevent people from getting close to one another, not the true self. Through fantastical images and surrealism, Burton gets close to the harsh realities of the human experience: loneliness and the inability to connect is painful, isolating, and inescapable, whether or not we have scissored hands. His art is a self-reflective pastiche, and perhaps Burton will always be his most complex character.