By Amni Azizan
“Visions are worth fighting for. Why spend your life making someone else's dreams?”
- Tim Burton -
The first time I saw the announcement about a pop-up museum at the heart of our nation, I slowed down my scrolling and then I clicked the news article when I noticed what piqued my interest. It was a Tim Burton exhibition! Apparently, it was also the first time the pop-up museum was held in Malaysia. Imagine my surprise! As someone who enjoys movies, I'm familiar with Burton’s works, including "Charlie and The Chocolate Factory" (2005), "The Corpse Bride" (2005), and also Netflix’s "Wednesday" (2022). Of course, the idea of going to a museum that displayed his works throughout the years spiked my heart rate.
When I read through the article, I learned that it was a travelling exhibition called A World of Tim Burton that was open to the public at the Pavillion Bukit Jalil from 21st March up until 30th July. Besides, it was also said that Kuala Lumpur was their first ever stop in Southeast Asia. Luckily for me, I had a friend who also wanted to go to the exhibition as well, so we made plans to go to the exhibit during the gap in our examination period.
We may have had a couple of hiccups before we stepped foot into the exhibit.
From online ticket issues (just buy the tickets on-site for future reference) to the wrong venue of the exhibition (we mistakenly went to Pavillion Bukit Bintang instead of Pavillion Bukit Jalil). Nonetheless, approximately one hour later (3 changes of LRT stations later), we finally made it to The World of Tim Burton.
The exhibition itself consisted of 10 sections:
Influences
Holidays
Carnivalesque
Figurative Works
Misunderstood Outcast
Film Characters
Polaroids
Around The World
Unrealized Projects
The Artist’s Studio
The exhibit was smaller than I thought it would be, but it was packed with all of his works. It was astonishing to see his works with my own eyes, as it displayed not only his works as a movie director but also his earlier works that can be seen from his childhood until his early career that paid homage to classic cartoonists and illustrators such as Edward Gorey, Charles Addams, Don Martin, and Theodore Geisel (Dr. Seuss), class notes and sketches during his college days (he has nice cursive writing and it put my own class notes to shame).
Furthermore, it proved that Burton has his own distinct style that distinguishes him from others through his drawings on hotel notepads and restaurant napkins around the world when he was shooting his films and doing publicity tours abroad (I think there was a Ritz-Carlton hotel napkin or maybe two). It showed that Burton’s mind was constantly restless and imagining something new that he had to put in his drawings with his own perceptions of the people and the world around him.
Other than that, the exhibit offered visitors a closer look at his film characters from "The Nightmare Before Christmas" (1993) to Dumbo (2019). The exhibit included paintings, videos, writing notes, storyboards, puppets, and maquettes that demonstrated how cinematic characters evolved from Burton's ideas to the big screen.
It was cool to see sculptures of the characters that I was familiar with in front of me, such as characters from "Frankenweenie" (2012), "The Corpse Bride" (2005) and "Charlie and The Chocolate Factory" (2005). Besides, we got to see his unrealized projects that were halted at various stages of development. Some of these ideas never advanced past the stage of brainstorming, while others in this section were completely realised but did not include any of Burton's concepts in the finished result. It offered a unique peek into previously undiscovered work that corroborated the artist's ideas and themes' continuity.
Of course, I was most intrigued when they displayed his studio. They only replicated a part of the studio where Burton worked alone, a place where he draws, plans and paints his creations to life. The sketches and drawings on cork boards feature works relating to current projects, including his new TV series project for Netflix, "Wednesday" (2022). The replicated studio offers a glimpse of Burton’s passion and where his artistic soul manifests itself.
I would describe the state of his studio as organised chaos, which in a way reflects his own state of mind that has a string of endless possibilities of his imagination that could be part of his projects.
All in all, we may have made a dent in our bank accounts to fund this trip, but it was a trip of a lifetime for me. I am grateful that I have the privilege to visit this exhibit as an opportunity like this only pops up once in a blue moon, so we must grasp it before we miss the chance to do so and regret will seep into our bones. Thus, if the opportunity appears, take a chance on it.
“One person's craziness is another person's reality.” -Tim Burton-
aww I wish I could be there