Filmmaker Guillermo del Toro, 51, has a fascination with darkness and an eye for detail.
His visually striking movies include the ghost story “Crimson Peak,” the fantasy “Pan’s Labyrinth” and the science fiction action pic “Pacific Rim,” but he doesn’t stop seeking out new things when he leaves the film set. The Mexican-born director has amassed a collection of sculptures, paintings, books, artifacts and curiosities that he keeps at a Los Angeles home office and workspace he calls Bleak House. In the quiet suburban residence, he spends time with his treasures and works on upcoming endeavors.
Del Toro has loaned a good chunk of his collection to “Guillermo del Toro: At Home With Monsters,” a traveling exhibit that will be at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art through Nov. 27. The retrospective also will include items from LACMA’s holdings.
“These things are vital for my storytelling,” del Toro said in a LACMA news release. This exhibition presents a small fraction of the things that have moved me, inspired me and consoled me as I transit through life. It’s a devotional sampling of the enormous love that is required to create, maintain and love monsters in our lives.”
LACMA has presented a number of film-related shows, but choosing what of del Toro’s to display was a challenge.
Britt Salvesen, the “Monsters” exhibit curator and department head of the Wallis Annenberg photography department and the prints and drawings department at LACMA, began working on the show in 2014 and met with del Toro at Bleak House five times. During her first visit, del Toro gave her a tour and orientation to the logic of the place. Subsequent visits became more detail-oriented, discussing specific objects, making notes and taking photographs, slowly narrowing down the items the filmmaker would loan out. All told, there are nearly 500 pieces on display in “Monsters.”
“One thing I decided early on was I would not do a filmography, which would be one gallery on each film, one leading to another, but instead responding to the way del Toro talks about his work and the way he organizes his house,” Salvesen said. “He says, like a lot of other filmmakers, he’s making the same film over and over again, which means that he’s always returning to the same core ideas even though they take on so many different forms.”
At LACMA, the arrangement of “Monsters” is reminiscent of a labyrinth or clockworks, both ideas that are important to del Toro, Salvesen said.
“Even though his films may seem at some level sometimes chaotic with energy, they’re very precise in their organization and their visual detail,” Salvesen said. “Often you’ll see clockwork motifs within the films, and with del Toro that stands for a whole larger interconnected system that he sets in motion.”
There are eight main sections within the exhibit, beginning with “Childhood and Innocence,” reflecting del Toro’s films that have child protagonists who drive the story while also being vulnerable to harm and fear. Next is “Victoriana,” which incorporates the style and furnishings of the Romantic, Victorian and Edwardian ages and the atmosphere of romanticism conflicting with modernization and the industrial revolution, another theme in his movies, Salvesen said. An example is “Crimson Peak,” and three costumes from the movie are on display.
Within “Victoriana” is a subset on insects, which are also prevalent in del Toro’s works.
“He’s very fascinated with insect physiology, but also with the way we have so many people respond in this very visceral way to insects, a fear response, even though if you look objectively as he does, they’re very great examples of nature’s design,” Salvesen said. “I think he likes to trigger those deep-seated reactions so lots of his monster designs relate to insect physiology in some way.”
Another subset is del Toro’s notebooks in which he records his ideas, especially for his creatures, both in writing and drawings. The notebooks are displayed open to set pages, but there are also digitized versions to look through.
“Monsters” features a lot of framed artwork from del Toro’s collection.
“In looking closely at these drawings and prints, original art, you can see how del Toro has drawn on art history, especially Victorian and symbolist art,” Salvesen said.
LACMA will offer two film programs in conjunction with “Monsters: Guillermo del Toro,” a series of his movies, shown on select dates through Nov. 18, and “Fuel for Nightmares: A Curated Series of Guillermo del Toro’s Inspirations, Influences and Favorite Films,” with matinees on select Tuesdays through Oct. 25.
IF YOU GO:
When: Through Nov. 27. 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Mondays, Tuesdays and Thursdays; 11 a.m.-8 p.m. Fridays; 10 a.m.-7 p.m. Saturdays-Sundays.
Where: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 5905 Wilshire Blvd., Los Angeles.
Admission: $25, free for 17 or younger. (Includes museum admission.)
Information: (323) 857-6000, lacma.org.
Contact the writer: Contact the writer: mjmills@scng.com Twitter: @mickieszoo
