Guillermo del Toro: At Home with Monsters – Exhibit Overview and Exclusive Gallery
Staci Layne Wilson
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Some of Guadalajara-born filmmaker Guillermo del Toro’s movies are rampant with monsters, melancholia, and the macabre – The Devil’s Backbone, Crimson Peak. Others are quirky, geeky, and wonder-struck – Hellboy, Pacific Rim. His creations are reflected in his art collection, now on display at The Los Angeles County Museum of Art.
GdT lives the dream (and nightmare) in L.A., in his two adjoining residences, Bleak House I and II (named for the classic Dickens novel). Surrounded in not only memorabilia and props from his own films, the creator immerses himself in art ranging from original Disney animation cells to dystopian surrealist paintings by Polish legend Zdzisław Beksiński. His walls, halls, and chambers are a bit barer now, as the collection is on loan to LACMA for all to enjoy (through November 27, 2016).
At the opening this week, GdT was the guest of honor at an exclusive Q&A for art critics and press; then he opened the way to the incredible installation. LACMA is renowned, especially of late, for honoring the city’s tradition of filmmaking – a few years back they featured the wacky world of Tim Burton and showcased an extensive Kubrick collection.
The fanboy/filmmaker, now 51, began making movies when he was only eight years old. He grew up in a Catholic household, which, as he said at the exhibition’s preview, he never quite got used to. He even went so far as to write a letter to his hero, sci-fi icon Forrest J Ackerman, asking if the man would adopt him! Many years later, he did, in a way… GdT believes the ghost of “Forry” amiably haunts Bleak House. The pair became friends in the 90s, geeking out over desserts at the famous House of Pies.
“My house is basically a response to his house,” GdT has said, noting that Forry’s digs were more museum than residence. “If there is life after death,” GdT is pretty sure his afterlife “will be art-directed by Redon.” (Odilon Redon was a French symbolist painter, printmaker, draughtsman, and pastellist.)
At the Q&A before we got to see the magnificent collection, he said, “I love praising monsters. I love telling people how great and beautiful horror stories can be. I’m not interested in the mechanics of the scary horror. I’m interested in the sort of kinship it has with fairy tales. The dark, magical beauty of horror.”
“We’ve wanted to work with him,” said LACMA director Michael Govan. “The idea was for him to make it an installation work, with objects from his collection. It’s not a chronology of his work; it’s a teasing out of his interests.”
“You can see my movies over and over again, you will see that I adore monsters, I absolutely love them. I think humans are pretty repulsive,” GdT said. “We live in the pretense. We have invented a series of fantasies that we accept socially that are absolutely terrifying, like geography, gender, and race. These are accepted fictions with which we have managed to separate from each other. And the beauty of monsters is that they require our acceptance and our love to survive.”
He also ascribed his Mexican heritage to his love of monsters, pointing out that although his own deeply religious family didn’t approve, his culture is rife with folklore and legend. For him, it’s not scary; it is, in fact, “graveyard poetry.” His art and collectibles unfold a fascinating story of horror, wonder, beauty, the occult, comic books, and shadow-cloaked fairy tales.
“I’m not a hoarder or collector, but something else,” he said, noting that he plays with his toys and reads his comics as opposed to keeping them in boxes and plastic bags. For him, art is to be both admired and enjoyed.
A welcoming sentry – a statue of the Angel of Death from Hellboy II – greets guests as they enter the Art of the Americas building that houses the “At Home with Monsters” exhibit. The exhibit is organized in various themes, beginning with the idea of an innocent who encounters otherworldly delights. If going in order, you will see a framed photo of eight-year-old Guillermo as your guide; then it’s on to young Ofelia of Pan’s Labyrinth and the orphans of The Devil’s Backbone. The Pale Man beckons with his all-seeing hand, and the girl in the blue coat from Pacific Rim stands opposite. This is where the Disney animation cells are, too.
The display also includes 60 items from LACMA’s own permanent collection, meshed with GdT’s Victorian, Gothic, and gleefully ghastly homages to icons such as Edgar Allan Poe, Frankenstein’s Monster and the Bride, and, of course, Forrest Ackerman himself in effigy. There’s even a huge, lifelike bust of GdT’s mentor, makeup artist Dick Smith.
In the chamber housing Dracula and other Universal Monsters is The Picture of Dorian Grey and lavish costumes and oil paintings from his most recent film, Crimson Peak. There is an area dedicated to the occult and magic, “Movies, Comics & Pop Culture,” and there’s even a whole chamber of insects, sideshow characters, and del Toro’s own personal “Rain Room,” which he installed in Bleak House to counteract all that pesky Hollywood sunshine.
In addition to the exhibit, there are guided tours of the collection as well as screenings of both GdT’s own movies and films that inspired the director at LACMA’s Bing Theater.
Next year the del Toro Exhibit will travel to the Minneapolis Institute of Art and Toronto’s Art Gallery of Ontario.
Guillermo del Toro: At Home with Monsters
- Where: Los Angeles County Museum of Art,
- When: August 1 to November 27, 2016
- Admission: $25 for adults, seniors, and students; children and members are free.
- Info: (323) 857-6010, lacma.org
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