Fans of the surreal and macabre have a chance to peer into the soul of Director Tim Burton. The Museum of Modern Art in New York will hold an exhibition featuring artwork from the man behind films such as Beetle Juice, Edward Scissorhands, and The Nightmare Before Christmas. Burton's fascination with the macabre and mysterious has defined his career.

 

The exhibition will show drawings, sculptures, figures and films made throughout Burton's life. It's a collection the artist believes will provide a firsthand look at his creative background.

Burton came to fame in the 1980s with films like Ed Wood, and the first two installments of the Batman movies. However, it's his unusual and imaginative art direction choices that have made him a mainstay in American pop culture. Burton's fondness for his surrealist visuals has become his signature, with toothy monsters, lanky skeletons, and rotting corpses among the characters he envisions in art and on film.

Burton credits the feelings of alienation during his childhood in suburban California for being a major part of his artistic upbringing.

Tim Burton said, "You're new to the world, everything is interesting and strange and new, so I think everybody struggles, and they find their own way to deal with it. For me, it was doing the drawings and thinking of things and sort of your interior world and, so everybody has their ways."

Among the memorabilia on display are Burton's grade school reports, works from his studies at the California Institute for the Arts in Los Angeles, 8 millimeter and 16 millimeter films from the 1970s and 1980s, and figurines, costumes, puppets and drawings from his career as one of Hollywood's most bankable directors.

The exhibit is called Tim Burton and it will run from November 22nd through April 26th at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.