Tim Burton at MoMA

11.12.2009

Timothy Walter Burton was born August 25, 1958 in Burbank, California. As a teenager bored with suburban life, he entertained himself by painting, drawing and making short films. In 1976 Burton entered CalArts in Valencia, CA which led to a job as an apprentice animator at The Walt Disney Company in 1979. His independent temperament was not well suited to work on the studio’s The Fox and the Hound (1981) and none of the hundreds of wildly imaginative concept drawings he did for The Black Cauldron (1985) were used for the film. However, Disney recognized his talent and supported the production of the shorts Vincent (1982), Hansel and Gretel (1983) and Frankenweenie (1984).

Burton’s feature film career began at Warner Bros. in 1985 with Pee-wee’s Big Adventure, Beetlejuice (1988) and Batman (1989), and his international reputation as an auteur with a unique visual style and imagination was cemented with artistic and box-office success of Edward Sissorhands (1990) for 20th Century Fox and Disney’s Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993).

Burton’s fourteen features include work in such disparate genres as, biography of Ed Wood (1994), science fiction Mars Attacks (1996), horror Sleepy Hollow (1999), fantasy Big Fish (2003), stop-motion animation Corpses Bride (2005), children’s literature Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005), and the musical Sweeney Todd ( 2007). Burton has directed for television – Aladdin and His Wonderful Lamp (1984) and Alfred Hitchcock Presents The Jar (1986), commercials – Hollywood Gun (1998) and Timex (2000), a web series – The World of Stainboy (2000) and the music video Bones (2006) for the rock group The Killers. In 1997, he published a book of illustrated verse The Melancholy Death of Oyster Boy and Other Stories and in 2003 Darkhorse Comics introduced his collectible figures Tragic Toys for Girls and Boys. Although he is known primarily as a filmmaker, Burton has always pursued private projects as an illustrator, painter and photographer – work that further reveals what he shares with a generation of artists influenced by late 20th Century popular culture. Burton’s 3-D adaptation of Alice in Wonderland will be released in March 2010. He resides in London.