Award-winning author A. S. Byatt contributes to Kimbell Art Museum's exhibition catalogue

FORT WORTH—The Booker Prize-winning novelist A. S. Byatt is no less spellbinding as a writer on art. Her essay “Moving Pictures” serves as an introduction to this richly illustrated book accompanying the Kimbell’s latest exhibition Butchers, Dragons, Gods & Skeletons: Film Installations by Philip Haas Inspired by Works in the Collection.

Byatt discusses Haas’s innovative works, their relationship to film, video, art, theater, puppetry, showmanship, and the history of an idea—that of the painting or sculpture that comes to life.

Following the essay are portfolios for each installation containing a description by Malcolm Warner (deputy director at the Kimbell), along with images from the films and reproductions of the works of art of the past that were Haas’s inspiration.

This publication is available for purchase on the Museum’s Web site, www.kimbellart.org, or in the Museum Shop (after July 15, 2009) for $24.95.

A. S. Byatt is internationally acclaimed as a novelist, short story writer, and critic. Her novels include Possession, awarded the Booker Prize in 1990; the quartet The Virgin in the Garden, Still Life, Babel Tower, and A Whistling Woman; The Game; and The Biographer’s Tale. She has also written two novellas, published together as Angels and Insects, and five collections of shorter works, including The Matisse Stories and Little Black Book of Stories, as well as several works of nonfiction. Educated at Cambridge, she was a senior lecturer in English and American literature at University College, London. She lives in London.

Byatt and Haas will be at the Kimbell for a book signing on Saturday, July 18, from 10 a.m.–noon in the Museum lobby. Panel discussion at 2 p.m. Advance digital copies of the catalogue are available upon request.

Butchers, Dragons, Gods & Skeletons: Film Installations by Philip Haas Inspired by Works in the Collection is a free exhibition that opens at the Kimbell Art Museum on Saturday, July 18, 2009. At the heart of Haas’s installations are short films that give form to ideas and feelings suggested by chosen works from the collection.

Though based on deep research into the original artists and cultures, they are poetic and sensuous in approach rather than factual like a documentary.

On occasion actors, dancers, and settings form themselves into an ingenious, at times uncanny re-creation of the original work—as though the original were a still that magically preceded the film to which it belonged. Allusions to other, related works of art further enrich the imagery.