I ask Burton if he would consider himself a fine artist, or more specifically, a "Pop Surrealist," as the MoMA show calls him. He fidgets with his hands, shifts in his seat. "Pop Surrealist? . . . I leave that to the experts," he responds. "My art has always been a very private, kind of quiet, and extremely private process. . . . And now I’m going to show it to everybody."

"Tim Burton" originally appeared in the November 2009 issue of Modern Painters. For a complete list of articles from this issue available on ARTINFO, see Modern Painters' November 2009 Table of Contents.