Pictured on the banner is "Stainboy", a character from Tim Burton's 1997 book, "The Melancholy Death of Oyster Boy and Other Stories"...
This was a cool installation, "Urban Light" by Chris Burden, a forest of city street lamps. It would have been awesome to see this lit up at night.
At the top of one of the buildings, you had this view...
We were going to check out some of the art in the pavilion but headed back down the escalators so that TC could take advantage of the craft/art tables which would be closing up within the half hour.
Below is the installation, "Circle of Animals/Zodiac Heads" by Chinese contemporary artist Ai WeiWei
which are re-creations of the famous traditional zodiac sculptures that were once on display in the Old Summer Palace, located just outside Beijing. The animal heads were located by the Resnick Pavilion where the Burton exhibit was showing. Lots of folks were snapping shots with each head. Those things are massive and impressive to see in person.
This is TC's zodiac sign, the Dragon. For me and Bert, it's the Rooster (picture above on the far right). More on this installation here.
There were several craft tables. One was dedicated to making tall paper hats, another just crowns. This particular table was what TC wanted to do the most, making a Tim Burtonesque "doll" made out of a stuffed napking (for the head), a paper "body" with attached chopsticks (for the legs), tape, and black and white pipecleaners, and black sharpies.
Mine is on the left; he is wearing a scarf and a striped coat like Beetlejuice. TC's on the right and had a flap that was opened to reveal bones underneath. I saw a young guy who creatively cut the back of the paper to make serrated and upturned tail coats. It was very cool.
Tickets to the show are "timed". Ours were for 4:00 and we had to line up at 3:45. If you buy your tickets online like I did, there is a $2 surcharge. Kids under 17 were free. I didn't want to chance not having the time we wanted sold out so I bought our tickets online.
This was taken from the line. The folks near the banners were "released" from the "pre-line" and were waiting to get into the exhibition hall. They were only letting in several groups at a time.
Right in front of the entrance was this topiary prop from "Edwards Scissorhands".
Photography is not allowed so you only got a shot of the entrance (and later on, these flaily/blowy windsocks at the very end). I loved the look of the open mouthed entrance as well as the colors, my favorite during college (black and white with a few splashes of blood red).
The Tim Burton exhibit was total sensory overload. There's no other words I can use to describe it. From his early drawings as a child, his scrapbooks, doodlings, a poster contest he won, a book submission to Disney, and gawd, tons more stuff. He pretty much archived himself and kept everything and I mean everything! It was really interesting to see how his works evolved over the years. It was enlightening for TC to see the different media that he used for his drawings (pen, ink, pencil, colored pencils, watercolor, polaroids) and that he even doodles on the classified ads.
In addition to his artworks, viewers also saw his early stop motion movies as well as "Vincent" (narrated by Vincent Price himself), "Frankenweenie", an experimental "Hansel and Gretel" (with an All Asian cast, which I thought was cool), and props from various movies such as one of the suits and bladed hands from "Edwards Scissorhands", severed heads from "Mars Attacks", the penguin baby carriage (eh, this wasn't so noteworthy)the angora sweater favored by Depp's character, "Ed Wood", and much more. There was a room that was entirely dark save for the freaky black light paintings of evil clowns and a crazy surreal carousel complete with fantastical creatures and music by Burton's musical collaborator, Danny Elfman (of Oingo Boingo fame). I especially liked his line drawings of famous people (Joey Ramone, Ronald Reagan) and his dark and twisted sense of humor (the scatalogical drawing of "Never shoot a constipated poodle").
Back int he late 80's, I've always felt an affinity for Tim Burton's skewed outlook on life. From the outsiders he depicted in "Pee Wee's Big Adventure", "Beetlejuice", "Edward Scissorhands" (I loved it so much, I saw it a second time, ALONE - that's how desperate I was to see it again), and "The Nightmare Before Christmas", his strange imagination caught my fancy and continues to fascinate (and perhaps repel those who don't "get it") people, young and old to this day. Judging from the wide variety of folks who were there that day (it wasn't just for the gothic set y'all), the exhibit attracted all types of people who appeared to enjoy the exhibit.
For more on the exhibit, see the museum's page as well as mixed reviews from yelp, media bistro, LA Times, and the Examiner.com. The show ends on Halloween.
Okay, now fast forward to very end and you see these multi-eyed creatures with wildly flailing striped limbs...
Although the museum was "Free" the particular day we went, the Tim Burton exhibit was NOT because it was a Special Exhibit and therefore you must fork over your dough for this. Because of our time constraints, and to be honest, our lack of interest in the rest of the museum (wut?), we only saw Tim Burton before heading out...Did I really want to see mid-century furniture?
We'll have to go back again to see the rest of this museum - it's ginormous and has a load of other artworks that I'm sure are very significant and noteworthy and blah blah blah.
For fun, we trekked over to the La Brea Tar Pits which is right next door. We saw this food truck across the street...Ooh..Dominican food, though we didn't stop by because we weren't hungry.
Here's another museum to maybe check out for a future visit, the Craft and Folk Art Museum...
Hmmm, these people had the
Up next, a quick look at the La Brea Tar Pits.
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