The Art of Tim Burton, Standard Edition

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Born in 1958 in Burbank, California, Burton grew up with an inverse relationship to his surroundings. Where Burbank was sunny and benign, Burton was moody, interested in the dark and the macabre. When other kids played ball and rode bicycles, he hung out in cemeteries and wax museums. He developed a love for Hammer horror films and B-movie sci-fi. He seemed to channel these sensibilities into his art, displaying a penchant for exaggerated caricatures and illustrations influenced by a range of pop art from advertising to children’s illustrators to comics. At CalArts, Burton animated several short films and developed his signature style as an illustrator of characters with amusingly exaggerated features. One of his student works, a partly silent animated short called Stalk of the Celery Monster, once again earned him attention from Walt Disney Studios, which brought him on as an animation apprentice after his graduation from CalArts in 1980, drawing mainly concept art and models for features. Tim Burton – Leah Gallo – Holly C.Kempf – Derek Frey, The Art of Tim Burton- Steeles Publishing – 2009 Tim Burton’s imaginary world has now become a familiar one, a world everyone is drawn to. A world which is welcoming and heart-warming, filled with strange-looking people and sad clowns more frightened than frightening. His message is clear: people are not defined by their appearances. To be different does not mean to be excluded and differences should be cultivated along with singularity and creativity. His universe is more appealing than scary even though it is full of outcast characters. Their tragedy inspires more pity than fear and monsters become charming. He shows life as both kind and tragic, beautiful and cruel, funny and disturbing. The horrible becomes tender and poignant and it is the beautiful that becomes scary. Monsters and Colours Tim Burton Work Cited Tim Burton ist im Herzen ein Künstler. Doch anstatt nur zu malen und nach seinem Tod berühmt zu werden, hat er seine Magie in Filmen gebannt. Doch das Problem, das alle Künstler*innen haben, bleibt: Er malt immer und überall auf alles, was nicht davonläuft. Also haben sich Leah Gallo und Holly Kempf hingesetzt und über 4.500 Puzzleteile zum Wahnsinn Burtons sortiert - Notizbücher, Bilder, Serviettenbildchen, Sketche und Konzepte für Filme und und und. Dann haben sie Weggefährten und Kollaborateure befragt und herausgekommen ist dieses 5 Kilo schwere Prachtwerk.

This major exhibition will invite visitors into his world through an exploration of the design of his unique aesthetic. While most well-known for his cinematic work, this show will display the full extent of his production as an illustrator, painter, photographer and author, as well as exploring key collaborations with designers. As a multi-disciplinary artist, his creations extend beyond the limits of mediums and formats. From this list, you get a clear sense of the zany, colorful, slightly surreal and over-the-top influences that resonated with Burton as a kid. It’s not easy to locate the full list of films online, so we’re presenting it here for your further Burton study and edification. Comprised of works from his signature films and projects including The Nightmare Before Christmasand The Melancholy Death of Oyster Boy and Other Stories(1997) to never-before-exhibited artworks, The World of Tim Burtonis a deeply engaging experience that gives the public access to the artist’s very personal and singular output.

A Compulsive Drawer

A general sense of visual distortion, the use of dialed-up color contrasts, looming architectural shapes, and an overall sense of heightened reality, are all further key parts of the aesthetic that form basic components of a “Burtonesque” look. Expressionism has influenced so many subsequent art and film styles — everything from film noir to Surrealist art, from art deco architecture to midcentury horror — that its impact on Burton’s own style hardly makes him unique. However, from here on out, his influences may seem even more surreal. A scene from Tim Burton’s 1986 episode of Faerie Tale Theatre finds Aladdin entering an Expressionist cave of wonders. YouTube And here Edward Scissorhands (Johnny Depp) is in his own garden of wonders a few years later. 20th Century Fox via IMDB The Day of the Dead made a huge impression on Burton After high school, Burton attended the prestigious California Institute of the Arts, which opened in 1961, partly out of the last great vision of Walt Disney himself. Disney died in 1966, but his brother and nephew were both on the school’s founding board of trustees. Disney had imagined an arts school designed specifically to educate new generations of animators, but it wasn’t until 1975 that the school began admitting students into a program to teach character animation. Walpole essentially expanded the tone of gothic architecture and gothic art into what we now know as gothic literature — a genre full of distinctive, familiar horror tropes: huge dark buildings looming up out of the mist; tortured heroes and antiheroes meeting their doom over a tragic lost love or an unearthed secret from their past; and a sense of delight in the sinister, the grotesque, the weird, the bloody, and the terrifying. Gothic sculpture, late 15th century, Amiens Cathedral. Eric Pouhier Gotham is true to its name with layers of Gothic architecture in Burton’s Batman (1989). Warner Bros. via IMDB His art is truly representative of his vision of the world and he also finds inspiration in the people who surround him. His drawings are often filled with social commentaries. He reveals the absurdity of our consumerist society and its hierarchical organisation. In one drawing he portrays the company Disney as a powerful dehumanizing machine which crushes any sense of singularity. He caricatures people and their behaviour from girls too obsessed by their physical appearance to a perverse man undressing a woman with his eyes, or a man covered in blood going in a gun shop and asking for more bullets. The suburbs he lived in also inspired him a lot and are at the heart of his film Edward Scissorhands. Tim Burton’s Characters and Punk (1980-1990) His Aesthetic and Message But this is the first with a lithograph of a red spiraling arrow pointing at a baby of sorts. (The second lithograph was a woman, the third lithograph was a creepy clown.)

In 2009, the Museum of Modern Art produced a wildly successful exhibition of Tim Burton’s art and sculpture, showcasing material from throughout his life and career as an artist and filmmaker. In conjunction with the exhibit, Burton curated a list of films that had had key influences over his life’s work. The film series, called “Tim Burton and the Lurid Beauty of Monsters,” included a wide-ranging list, from the works of B-movie scion Roger Corman to horror films by James Whale, Tobe Hooper, and many others.

His Inspirations

Over the years, Burton has achieved both critical and commercial success in the live-action and animation genres.2007’s Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Streetwon the Golden Globe for Best Film—Musical or Comedy and earned Burton a National Board of Review award for his directing work.Many of his films – such as Ed Wood (1994),Sleepy Hollow (1999), Big Fish (2003),and Alice in Wonderland(2010) – have garnered numerous Academy Awards, BAFTA, and Golden Globe nominations and wins, cementing his status as one of the greatest film makers of our time. Between his love for Vincent Price, Edgar Allan Poe, skeletons, and cemeteries, Burton soaked up plenty of gothic inspiration as a child. But remember — he also grew up in peaceful, quintessentially suburban Burbank, where he was constantly fascinated with thoughts of ominous and dark things lurking beneath the surface. But perhaps no style is more overt in the work of and more closely associated with Tim Burton than that of the gothic. Tim Burton films are obviously gothic — but with a twist

Can't say Tim Burton is an incredible artist, but that's what makes every piece true. He's not doing it for money or because he's really good at it. It's one of the only ways he knows how to express himself, whether its on paper or camera. Having it all bound into this wonderful cloth covered book is fantastic. Not too mention the Deluxe edition looks great on any shelf or table.As a mature artist, Tim Burton’s work married his love of the surreal to stories that stripped away the banality of everyday, politely civilized life. Vincent and Frankenweenie are about normal boys feeding their love for the grotesque within quiet normal households. The Nightmare Before Christmas is about the unholy juxtaposition of Halloween and Christmas. Sweeney Todd sees a serial killer opening up a respectable barber shop; though based on an existing musical, its themes fit perfectly into the Burton portfolio. And in Edward Scissorhands, Edward’s nightmare house is next to, well, this: A scene from Edward Scissorhands. Paramount Pictures via IMDB The too-bright visuals and overly stylized tone of this scene in Sweeney Todd let you know it’s an Expressionist dream sequence. The contrast between the dark and brooding couple and their bucolic surroundings let you know it’s Burton-esque. Paramount Pictures via IMDB This is the First Edition, First Printing of the deluxe edition limited to 1000 copies signed by the artist. Tim Burton entered the California Institute of Art and worked in animation for Disney but was soon disappointed by the company’s style, which was very different from his own. He was contrived to imitate and create pale imitations of Disney pencil traits with no soul and no emotion. All his independent projects were considered too bizarre to be screened and not adapted for children. It is only after leaving Disney studios that Tim Burton was able to free himself from artistic constrictions and focus on his art which he developed by embracing filmmaking. A film always starts with a drawing. Intuitive, enthusiastic and perfectionist, Tim Burton draws like he breathes. He has never separated his art work from his film work. Johnny Depp recalls his first collaboration with Burton: Burton’s distorted, slightly dystopian suburbia often takes on a gleefully manic, almost circus-like form that’s descended from gothic’s bloodier cousin, Grand Guignol. We see its influence in films like Beetlejuice, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and Sweeney Todd. Whether or not things get bloody, they’re always tinged with an awareness that things could get bloody. And that’s the heart of the gothic in a Burton work. Burton also cites a number of mid-century sci-fi and horror films as influences over his work 1999’s Sleepy Hollow, which featured cinematography by Emanuel Lubezki, drips with homages to Hammer films and Maria Bava. Paramount Pictures via IMDB

But what does it mean to be “Burton-esque?” Is there a way to catalog the visual ingredients of a Burton film? And how did Burton develop such a distinct visual style that continues to resonate so strongly with audiences? The Burton-esque style is derived from a wealth of art, cinematic, and literary genres. But if Burton’s work was just copied from his influences, it wouldn’t resonate with viewers. What Burton brings to all these ideas is his own joyous idiosyncrasy — his ability to meld the ominous and the frightful with a sense of whimsy, and then turn that unholy duet into part of the act and the art of being a tortured outsider. Beautiful, magical and a wonderful way to spend a couple of hours. Sitting in a huge chair with this epic tome balanced on your knee, especially with an equally large mug of coffee next to you. : ) The Art of Tim Burton: The Artist Before The Filmmaker Offering a Valentine, Tim Burton (1980-1986) All I had the first time I went to work with Tim on Edward Scissorhands aside from the images arriving in my mind, was a tiny drawing that Tim had made. One look at that drawing was all I needed to understand what Edward was about. It has been exactly the same ever since.” His InspirationsThe real strength in Tim’s artwork is his appreciation of form with strong shapes and exaggerated proportions. Within a few seemingly simple pen lines, he creates bold silhouettes […] You would be mistaken for thinking that some of Tim’s rough sketches are rudimentary, loose or naïve, for they hold vital information, demonstrate a great delicacy, sensitivity, consistent keen eye, and a stunning vision’.