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Skeletons Warming Themselves

Arhat Taming the Dragon

The Butcher's Shop

The Death of Pentheus

Apollo and the Continents

Commissioned by the Kimbell, Philip Haas’s film installations interpret and elaborate upon selected works in the Museum’s permanent collection. Though based on deep research into the original artists and cultures, Haas’s films are poetic and sensuous in approach rather than factual like a documentary. Between seven and twenty minutes in length and running continuously, they are projected on screens of various unconventional formats and configurations. All are accompanied by original music, and several appear in elaborate architectural and sculptural sets, further immersing the viewer in the experience.

The installations complement a full display of the Kimbell’s permanent collection, each occupying a space near the work to which it relates.

On View: July 18 - October 25, 2009

Philip Haas

Philip Haas’s best-known feature film is the Oscar-nominated Angels and Insects (1995), based on the novella by A. S. Byatt, starring Kristin Scott Thomas and Mark Rylance. Angels and Insects premiered in competition at the Cannes Film Festival, and in the year of its release was the top-grossing American independent film. Haas has directed five other feature films, including The Music of Chance (1993), adapted from the novel by Paul Auster, starring James Spader, Mandy Patinkin, Charles Durning, and Joel Grey; Up at the Villa (2000), with Sean Penn, Anne Bancroft, Derek Jacobi, and Kristin Scott Thomas; and The Situation (2007), the first American feature film dealing with the war in Iraq, starring Connie Nielsen.

Before becoming a filmmaker, Haas studied art history at Harvard. In addition to his feature films, he has made ten documentaries with visual artists. The subjects range from Gilbert & George and David Hockney––on Chinese painting––to Australian aboriginal ground painters and the funerary sculptors of Madagascar. Retrospectives of the documentaries have been held at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, the Film Society of Lincoln Center in New York, the Tate in London, and the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris. For his documentary work, Haas was awarded a fellowship from the Guggenheim Foundation.

Philip Haas’s film installation work and paintings are represented by the Sonnabend Gallery in New York. He has taught in the creative writing and visual arts departments at Princeton.

Exhibition Catalogue

The publication for Butchers, Dragons, Gods & Skeletons will feature an essay by the British writer A. S. Byatt, an admirer of Haas and author of the novella on which he based his best-known film, Angels and Insects (1995). Byatt won the prestigious Booker Prize in 1990 for her novel Possession.

The book is available after July 15 in softcover for $24.95. Orders may be placed by visiting the Museum Shop online at www.kimbellart.org; by calling 817-332-8451, ext. 244; or by sending an e-mail to: orders@kimbellmuseum.org. Allow two to four weeks for delivery.

Philip Haas

Filmmaker Philip Haas