Tim Burton has a type. She is lily-white and willowy, with blood-red lips and oversized eyes the shape of almonds. She is, inevitably, covered in cobwebs. This woman – a corpse bride, you might say – is all over The Design Museum’s blockbuster Burton exhibition, drawn across the decades in sketchbooks and on hotel stationery, on napkins and in tear-away notepads. It becomes its own running joke. Yes, here you may bear witness to the literal scissor-hands from Edward Scissorhands, but also look at yet another crude sketch of an incredibly busty undead woman!
The World of Tim Burton does not, then, guide us through one man’s extraordinary evolution over time. Really this eagerly anticipated exhibition, which smashed the museum’s record for advance ticket sales and is running until April 2025, is a celebration of an old motto: if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
