Tim Burton was trending on Twitter when the account of the Prado Museum, one of the most important in Spain and the world, published a video where the film director told what his favorite painting is. Is about “The Garden of Earthly Delights”from the Dutch painter Bosch, which has been on permanent display at El Prado since 1939. “This is my favorite painting in the whole world. It has inspired me. And I am so happy to see her,” says Burton in the video that records his visit to the famous museum.
The painting, which dates from around 1500, is a triptych that functions as a “box” that opens: when closed, the triptych offers an image of a transparent globe with the earth inside. When opened, the work shows images loaded with religious symbology. In the table on the left, the last day of creation is represented, with Adam and Eve as protagonists. In the center there are hundreds of images of naked bodies that represent lust, that is, the loss of grace on the part of human beings. And finally, on the right panel, hell: an apocalyptic image where humans pay for their sins, in dark tones and full of devils and tortured bodies: a dark scene that, perhaps, is the one that is more related to aesthetics sinister characteristic of the cinema of the popular American filmmaker.
“The Garden of Earthly Delights” is a famous work that has fascinated the public for centuries, and that was studied for the number of symbols it contains and for anticipating surrealism in the use of strange and dreamlike images that do not have a linear or linear sense. realistic, something that was not common in the way of painting that existed at the time of El Bosco.
Burton’s Maze.
Burton was in Madrid for the inauguration of “The labyrinth”, an exhibition that invites you to take a journey through the creative universe of the director, where you can see some of the most remembered characters from his films. Some of them are the Corpse Bride from “Corpse Bride”, or Edward, the man with scissor hands, who played Burton’s favorite actor Johnny Deepin the movie of the same name.
The exhibition is about a tent installed where visitors can take up to 300 different routes to “get” into the head of the director. “It’s like my head, for better and for worse,” Burton said. The tent contains 200 of his original sketches, audiovisual projections and a series of rooms where scenarios from his films have been simulated. In addition, you can listen to the music of his films, most of them composed by his main musician, Danny Elfmanwho also provided the voice for Jack Skellington, the character from “The Nightmare Before Christmas”.
Soon it will be possible to see on Netflix “Merlina”, the new series directed by Burton that will deal with the character of “The crazy Addams”.
