‘If you’d asked me a year ago what defines the Burtonesque, I might have referenced those usual aphorisms around spirals and stripes and checkerboards,’ offers Maria McLintock, the curator behind The World of Tim Burton, a comprehensive new survey at the Design Museum. ‘Actually, it's about a craft, a dedication to slowness, to the handmade; of working with designers like Colleen Atwood on costume or Rick Heinrichs on production, in a very involved and iterative way.’ McLintock is well versed in the singular sensibility of Burton’s creative output – as a teenager she gorged on the filmmaker’s oeuvre she says – and the show provides a rich interrogation of his practice, highlighting in particular the relationships that have been most pivotal in the spell he’s cast over the past five decades.
