recently, the seoul museum of art opened an exhibit featuring tim burton. i'm not a huge tim burton fan, but i can respect his creativity and i genuinely like some of his films. the bit we'd managed to find online about the exhibit said it featured his art and various items from his films, so that alone sounded pretty cool. friends were also intrigued by the exhibit, so one saturday, we made our way into seoul to check it out.
(sidenote: for some reason, most of my photos seem to have come out a little blurry. which is unfortunate. well done, iphone.)
the facade of the museum was completely tim burton-ed.
since it was a saturday, there was quite a line just to pick up tickets. then, there was an additional wait time inside the museum -- we had to take tickets with numbers and they called in groups of about 100 at a time. we waited about thirty minutes for our numbers to be called up.
according to the brochure we were given, there are over 860 pieces in the show and about 85% are from burton's own collection, with the rest on loan from various studios and private collections.
photos weren't allowed inside the galleries, unfortunately, because there was quite a bit i would have liked to photograph. quite a lot of the rooms were entirely his drawings through the years -- old pencil sketches, drawings from art classes, doodles in the margins of school papers and on napkins... it was pretty damn cool. his characters and art are often a little too grotesque and ugly for me, but it was interesting to see how he had been drawing many of his well-known characters for years and trace their evolution.
outside the entrance to one of the galleries. i promise i was having more fun than this picture suggests.
here are examples of some of his drawings that were featured inside the galleries. for all of his creepy-weird art, i have to say that he does make use of color nicely.
this was one piece that i really liked in particular, called "romeo and juliet." there's something very maurice sendak about it, but also a fair amount of tim burton weird.
after going through the galleries of his art, the last sections of the museum were dedicated to his films. they featured props, conceptual sketches/art, and models of different characters. in the "nightmare before christmas" section, for example, they had an entire case of small jack skellington heads showing a variety of expressions.
this section was also a no photography zone, but i managed to sneak a couple (of even more blurry, due to sneaky stealth mode photo taking) photos, because this is probably my favorite tim burton film...
"edward scissorhands" topiary! (well, a replica.)
the closest i will probably ever get to johnny depp. (and so blurry.)
overall, it was a pretty neat exhibit. one thing that did detract from the whole experience was it was a saturday, and therefore extremely crowded. i remember being pleased that i'm taller than most of this country because i was able to see over heads to look at the art. in most of the rooms, everyone was moving along in a (painfully slow) single-file line, so i bypassed the crowd and moved around behind them at my leisure. so, i recommend not going on a weekend, or just getting there very early.
details:
the seoul museum of art is located near the subway station for city hall:
-from line one (blue), go out of exit one.
-from line two (green), go out of exit ten, eleven, or twelve.
the museum is located behind deoksugung (palace) -- if you're facing the entrance to the palace nearest to the above subway station exits, walk down the road that runs along the left of the palace wall. the museum will be on your left after about five minutes.
the entrance fee is ₩12,000 and the exhibit runs through april 14, 2013.
for information about the museum's operating hours, visit their website here.
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