Museum of Modern Art is holding a major career retrospective on filmmaker Tim Burton. The retrospective will consist of a gallery exhibition, and a film series. It will cover Burton’s career as a director, producer, writer, and animator of live-action films. His work as a fiction writer and illustrator will also be included It will narrate the evolution of his creative practices, following his visual imagination from his earliest childhood drawing through his mature work. Taking inspiration from sources in pop culture, Burton has reinvented Hollywood genre film making as a spiritual experience, and influenced a generation of young artists working in film, video, and graphics. Tim Burton was an animator for Disney Studios when he was hired by Paul Reubens to direct Pee-wee’s Big Adventure (1985). The film a quirky hit, and led to Burton making an the even quirkier hit Beetlejuice 1988, and then blockbuster Batman 1989.

The gallery exhibition will focus on work generated during the process of conception, development, and production of his films. It will cover Burton’s realized and some unrealized projects. It will include works in various mediums, as well as work in digital and moving-image formats such as concept art, production designs, drawn and painted animation art, 3-D models, puppets and maquettes, script treatments, storyboards, screen tests, and other audio-visual components. There will also be examples of his work as a graphic artist for his non-film projects. Burton’s films include Vincent (1982), Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure (1985), Beetlejuice (1988), Edward Scissorhands (1990), The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993), Ed Wood (1994), Sleepy Hollow (1999), Corpse Bride (2005), and Sweeney Todd (2007); writing and web projects include The Melancholy Death of Oyster Boy & Other Stories (1997), and Stainboy (2000). The exhibition is organized by Steven Higgins, Curator; Ron Magliozzi, Assistant Curator; and Jenny He, Curatorial Assistant, Department of Film, The Museum of Modern Art.

Tue 11/17 – Mon 4/26/10 (7PM) at 11 W 53rd St New York, NY, Official Site: http://www.moma.org

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