Tim Burton bio

Tim Burton was born in 1958, in the city of Burbank, California.

He remains without question one of the greatest original film directors working in America today.

 Indeed, his talent and originality have kept him at the top of the profession where he occupies a very special place, somewhere between the mainstream and the avant-garde, in that region of cinema occupied by artists whose worldview is so unconventional that it attains popular appeal.

In 1989, Tim Burton directed the hugely famous Batman which, although his very personal film, was one of the most watched movies of all time and gave him unprecedented recognition in Hollywood, considering the originality and adventurousness of his previous films (for example Beetlejuice in 1988).

Edward Scissorhands (1990), another hit, saw him at the peak of his creating powers and established a fruitful working tandem with actor Johnny Depp who played in his 2005 film adaptation of Roald Dahl’s book Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and who became one of his most esteemed since their first film together.

In 1992, Batman Returns was a much darker film than the original, a reflection of how much creative freedom Tim Burton had won (seen as Warner Bros were reputedly unhappy with the final result).

And even though Ed Wood (1994), his loving tribute to the life and work of the legendary ‘Worst Director of All Time’ Edward D. Wood, Jr., was a box-office disaster, it got some of the best reviews of Burton’s career.

In fact, Tim Burton is known both for his dark, quirky-themed films like Sleepy Hollow, Corpse Bride, Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, or Dark Shadows (2012) and for blockbusters  such as Pee-Wee's Big Adventure, Batman, Planet of the Apes, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Alice in Wonderland (2010), one of his most recent films, which became the fifth highest-grossing film of all time.

Burton has directed 18 feature films as of 2014, and has produced 12 as of 2012 (among which the very nice stop motion tale called The  Nightmare Before Christmas in 1993).

All in all, Tim Burton’s films consistently challenge the spectator’s eye, push forward the bonds of filmmaking and bring to life previously unthinkable characters (like Edward Scissorhands).

Taken as a whole, his work consists on the confrontation of the fantastic and the real, and the consequences of these two worlds intermingling.

Big Fish, Burton’s 2003 effort, is no different. And yet, somehow, it is not really the same.

On the surface, it would appear to have all the characteristics of a classic Burton film: a magic screenplay, fairy-tale characters, flights of imagination, forces of nature (as well as the supernatural), far-fetched situations and vastly imaginative visual style and imagery. The movie is, in fact, packed with fanciful episodes that it begins to feel like a loose adaptation of The Odyssey, told from the mouth of an aging character named Ed Bloom, a story-teller and dreamer who sees the world with beautiful eyes. 

London Calling and the different forms of power

In 1979 The Clash released their third album, London Calling that contained a song with that same name:

  The clash is a British punk band created in 1976 and dissolved in 1986. Its members were 4: Joe Strummer, Mick Jones, Paul Simonon and Nicky Headon; so simply a singer a guitarist a bassist and a drummer. Their music is not only punk but also a mix of ska, reggae, funk and rockabilly.

About the song London Calling, the first thing to know is where the title comes from. In the Second World war, when the BBC radio broadcasted in occupied countries the announcer often identified himself on air by saying "This is London Calling". The title itselfself clearly bears this meaning, this idea of fight against oppression and of facing danger, but a danger of a very different nature. 

The song starts with that idea of war with "now war is declared/and battle come down". The kind of war the band is announcing is explained by the next two lines. It would be a fight lead by "the underworld", some hidden silent force that has been growing under our feet. It is no other than "you boys and girls", the young, who live in this "underworld". The first stanza is then obviously about a recurrent topic in punk music: the empowerment of young people. But against whom are they fighting? Being punk it needed to be the establishment, seen trough the violent image of the "truncheon thing" that policemen hold and hit with. They don't seem to be afraid of it, because they metaphorically use the ring of that truncheon as a "swing", in a play on words with the musical genre of swing, and a humorous image to make fun of the police. They would be comparing the authorities' tools of repression with children's games, making them look ridiculous, something they needed the year Margaret Thatcher, the iron lady, won the elections. In this first verse there are two lines that seem to be out of place: "London calling, now don't look to us!/That phoney beatlemania has bitten the dust.". But looking closely we can see a warning about how this youth should act for change and lead the fight, and that is not blindly following musical idols for the sake of doing it, which is what they seem to think about the "revolution" caused by the Beatles in the 1960s and the bands all around the world that still copied their style in the 1970s, but doing things by itself. What allows to follow this interpretation is another couple of lines right at the beginning of the second verse:"London calling to the imitation zone/forget it, brother, you can go it alone!". It takes that idea of imitation that is implicit in beatlemania making it even more clear that they want to see the opposite, subversion, and then uses the second person to talk to every individual in that imitation zone to tell them that they have the capacity to act "alone". When at the end we can hear “yeah, I was there too/ and you know what they said?/ well some of it was true!” it really sounds like something someone would say about a revolution. The song starts out encouraging rebellion among young people, and by repeating "London calling" every two lines in some kind of partial anaphora, it gives the text a regular rhythm that goes together with the almost military rhythm of the music, apart from making it quite catchy. Repeating constantly these two words is also a reminder of where the message comes from. London is in this song the centre of a communication with the whole world, “the far away towns”, so it’s the place where everything that is said comes from.

Moving on to the chorus, it is clear that suddenly the message conveyed changes. The four lines of the chorus, slightly different from one another, show an apocalyptic panorama where human weakness against the power of destruction of our own universe, and at the same time our own power of destruction, are strongly felt. It is just a list, a descendent gradation of ways humanity could be destroyed, and the inspiration for this is simply the news in 1979. There is first of all a reference to a scientific theory that predicted our interglacial era would at some point come to an end, “the Ice age is coming”. Then on the opposite side, following the theory of an explosion of the sun that would engulf the Earth they say “The Sun’s zooming in”. The line “The wheat is growing thin”, a witty pun with the verb to grow, takes inspiration in the massive and particularly serious food shortages that NGOs and even the UN were trying to deal with at that time. So another apocalypse could be famine.  Further down we hear that “London is drowning”. That alludes to the concern about the river Thames causing floods that year that resulted in the construction of the Thames barrier in 1982. It’s not something that could destroy humanity but it sure would have been a great local disaster and cause many deaths. The chorus doesn’t only talk about how nature, with strength infinitely bigger than humans’, could end with our kind but also how we humans ourselves could be our own doom. There are two references to nuclear disasters in the chorus: “a nuclear error” and “meltdown expected”, probably both references to the Three Mile Island nuclear accident earlier that year, and reflections of the fear of a nuclear war at the beginning of a tense period in the Cold war. There is also a reference to the various oil crises the world had lived throughout that 1970s decade. The band imagines the collapse if “engines stopped running”, again, not apocalypse but a huge, socially dangerous crisis. The accumulation used in this chorus makes the feeling of anxiety grow stronger progressively.

That apocalyptic situation the chorus shows us, either caused by the power of nature, either provoked by humans themselves, sheds light on the verses and gives them a meaning that goes beyond the obvious subversive empowerment. Apart from explaining images like zombies of death, always a nice thing to include in a song for punk bands, it can make us see “the underworld” as some kind of dark safe place where survivors live, and the war not only as an almost metaphoric way to describe a fight against establishment but also as a disastrous consequence of a previous disaster that we need strength to face. The song then becomes an encouragement to survive the world and its hardships, set in this hypothetical time. Lines like “Quit holding out, and draw another breath” go in with that sense of a call to inner strength and courage, in a dangerous world where you “don’t wanna shout”. When in the final two lines of the chorus, after scaring us with the worst that could happen the singer declares “But I have no fear/’Cause London is drowning and I live by the river”, with that contradictory “’cause” that should be an “although”, he himself is showing his bravery, that consists in staying calm even when everything is falling apart. At the very end he goes even further and asks “and after all this, won’t you give me a smile?”, encouraging us, maybe with a touch of irony, to try and not let the most terrible things bring us down completely. London would also be calling at the power of our mental strength.

London calling is about three different forms of power. First there is the power of youth that gives change a chance through rebellion. Then there is the power of destruction that exists in the great forces of nature like the Sun, the climate or the earth and its products, but also within humankind that likes to play with fire. And last but not least there is another human power besides self-destruction which is courage along with the ability to cope with terrible things. We have seen three forms of power but there is only one location of power, in this case the power of communication, and it is London, just as it was in the Second World War. 

"Pop Art myths" review

The art exhibition "Pop Art myths" took place at the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museun (http://www.museothyssen.org) located in the Paseo del Prado, in the city of Madrid, between June 10 and September 14, 2014.

It Showed works by more than 20 renowned pop artists essentially from the United-States, featuring the legends of Pop that are Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein. But it also has a big selection of European Pop artists, notably British artist Richard Hamilton, Mimmo Rotella from Italy, Alain Jacquet from France, Wolf Vostell from Germany and two Spanish Pop groups: Equipo realidad and Equipo crónica. The show is unfortunately over now and is not going to travel to other cities.

Roy Lichtenstein Look Mickey, 1961 National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

                                                                                                                                                                                        

From the entrance Hall of the exhibition a bright yellow curved wall that welcomes the viewer already gives the general feeling of the show. It is a vibrant colourful compilation of collages, posters, huge comic book style paintings and strange readymades that awaken curiosity and sometimes even laughter. The title is not betrayed, founding myths of Pop Art were found on the walls of the Thyssen Museum. The exhibition was a great chance to see the 1961 Look Mickey painting by Roy Lichtenstein in real life, Some of Warhol's works on Marilyn Monroe or his Campbell's Soup paintings, and even one of Hamilton's "slip it to me" pins, for the viewers who didn't know them yet. But to anyone willing to look a bit further what was really worth seeing is the extension of Pop art outside the US and the way European artists brought Pop to their own culture, which could be seen for example through the living room by Equipo crónica, a tribute to Velazquez. The exhibition’s rooms were classified by themes like “interiors and still lifes”, “portraits” or “urban eroticism”, an organisation that gave logical order to the crowd of artists showed, but that was sometimes difficult to follow as so many Art works could not fit into one category. A very interesting room to look at was “history painting”, with works about Cold War and dictatorships that showed the connection of Pop artists with their time beyond consumer society, a political view that is too often forgotten along with the dialogue of these artists with the work of great masters, also showed in the "Art about Art" room.  The exhibition lacked however consistency on the side of photography limited to the bits of photos that could be found in collages. That flaw could be balanced by  taking a look at another museum in Madrid, the Reina Sofia (on a Sunday to get the tickets for free) were, simultaneously, a monographic exhibition on Richard Hamilton was showing, with a room full of his artist friends' polaroids.  Just as any other Pop Art show, "Myths of Pop Art" had a very strong capitalist society atmosphere, with numerous representations of mass consumerism goods like coke, Brillo soap pads and Hollywood film posters.

Andy Warhol
Heinz ketchup box and billo soap pads box, 1964
Mugrabi Collection

As a grade 12 High school student in Art and literature and I think I tend to feel very close to the youthful aesthetic of the comic book style paintings and the references to cinematographic art. Because I am so young but yet very interested in art I would consider myself an only mildly experienced viewer, nothing close to an expert. So when it comes to preferences I mainly play by ear. Being Spanish, it was to me a very nice surprise to find at the show national artists whose existence I knew of but that I had never thought of as Pop artists, so I payed special attention to them. My sensitivity is also on the side of the historical works shown, which refer to a past pretty close to our time that I did however not live myself, and that thus awaken some kind of fascination. It was one of the inexplicable yet fascinating works found in the history art room that particularly caught my attention:

Öyvind Fahlström
Red Seesaw,1964
IVAM, Institut Valencià d'Art Modern

 Fahlström's Red seesaw is a piece of Pop Art in every way.  It could be, I think, a great example to illustrate a definition of this movement. First of all the technique is original and innovative, because it's a mix of many disciplines: a montage with painted wood for the seesaw and painted paper mache for the frogs, collage and painting  on cardboard and steel wire to make some things pop out. Also the colours are bright and it very much represents American society in the 1960s. What strikes first is the compilation of humorous images of popular American culture like president Richard Nixon dancing with his vice president Spiro Agnew, dressed as a girl, a policeman with a huge hand, or the statue of liberty with a baseball bat (Fahlström lived in NY at that time), and absurd objects like what seems to be the pope, the flag saying "suck cats", the flying cat, the guinea pig and the pig's head. What lays behind however is much less humorous, as it is a clear metaphor of the fragile political balance in the US at the time of the 1968 elections and the Cold War. The image of the balanced seesaw shows an unstable situation and most importantly a tie between two rivals, the communist red frog on the left and the capitalist blue frog on the right. As it mainly shows the American political crisis, there are no communist images and most of the little cardboard images are on the blue frog's side. Nixon's dance with Agnew is probably a teasing critic to his electoral choices, and the policeman could represent the repression of anti Vietnam war protests on the streets. To continue around the Vietnam war, the baseball bat in the hand of the statue of liberty, looking towards the left red side certainly symbolizes the US's violence in that war. The cat flying on a bottle could be a funny way to talk about the space race, and would explain the "suck cats" flag on the red side. The symbols and jokes in that seesaw are so many and can be divided into so many layers that every little cardboard image could be analysed like this. That is why the more I look at that seesaw the more I laugh, and the more I understand the sharp political criticism it holds. To the hilarious irony that makes it in my opinion incredibly clever and meaningful (which originally is, I think, the purpose of Pop Art), there is a part of mystery added. Some images like the choice of the frog for the two sides of the cold war, the pope or the monkey remain inexplicable to me, maybe because I don't have the cultural tools to understand them, maybe because Fahlström wanted to remain partially cryptic. In any case it is also that part of misery that makes it so attractive to me. it feels in some way like an enigma. That touch of enigma added to the incredibly attractive Pop aesthetics, the dynamic format, the satire, and the apparently absurd jokes makes Fahlström's seesaw a fascinating piece of art that is strangely enough very little known. 

Sadly, as I said, the show is over and is not going to travel anywhere else. However, many of the Art works shown at the exhibition can now be found at the IVAM (Institut Valencià d'Art Modern), in the city of Valencia, Spain, where they belong. Some of them are the Red seesaw, a couple of Equipo crónica's paintings and a "slip it to me" pin between other Hamilton pieces.