Guillermo del Toro Shares His Private World at LACMA

Patrick Regan

Director-producer Guillermo del Toro’s “Man Cave” is the stuff of legends.  Literally. His house – known as “Bleak House” after the Charles Dickens novel – is overstuffed with drawings, movie memorabilia, and enough potentially cursed items to give the ghost-hunting Warrens a run for their money. You can see these influences in his work.  Del Toro is, after all, the filmmaker who gave us “Hellboy,” “Pan’s Labyrinth,”, and “Pacific Rim,” a man whose visual style and creative voice are unmistakable.

Beginning August 1, del Toro will open the door into his mind and his office with “Guillermo del Toro: At Home with Monsters,” a new exhibition at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.  An eight-part journey through del Toro’s interests and creative process, the exhibition draws from his own collection, his own personal storehouse, elements from his films and, most intriguing of all, pages from his handwritten journals.

The eight thematic sections each capture a facet of that which inspires and fascinates del Toro: “Childhood and Innocence,” “Victoriana,” “Magic, Alchemy, and the Occult,” “Movies, Comics, Pop Culture,” “Frankenstein and Horror,” “Freaks and Monsters,” and “Death and the Afterlife.” An installation of particular interest is a recreation of his “Rain Room,” part of Bleak House that he has retrofitted to appear as if in a constant Gothic thunder storm.

Del Toro’s main goal in the exhibition was to push forward a specific idea – to find beauty and love in those things which scare us, or even disgust us.  As he put it: “To find beauty in the profane. To elevate the banal. To be moved by genre. These things are vital for my storytelling… 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.”

Fans of del Toro’s work will already have this mindset.  They’ve seen Hellboy’s nobility, the mercy of Pan, and the dying beauty of “Crimson Peak.” For those new to his worlds, however, del Toro invites you to open your mind and find the sublime in the horrible.  It might just surprise you.

“Guillermo del Toro: At Home with Monsters” is at LACMA from Aug. 1 to Nov. 27.