Ouborgprijs 2005
Ben van Os
Ben van Os won international renown as a cinematic art director.
Over the last twenty years he has designed unforgettable sets for over
sixty feature films and was nominated twice for an Oscar: in 1994
together with Jan Roelfs for the design of Sally Potter's Orlando and
last year for his atmospheric work on Peter Webber's Girl with a Pearl
Earring.
Ben van Os is best known for his partnership with director Peter
Greenaway, whose weird and wonderful films ZOO (1985), Drowning by
Numbers (1986), The Cook, The Thief, His Wife & Her Lover (1989)
and Prospero's Books (1991) owe their reputation in part to the lavish
but disconcerting sets designed by Ben van Os and his partner Jan
Roelfs. Van Os has become famous for his baroque, dreamlike style of
cinematic design. He says that the ‘castles in the air' that he creates
constitute a world in themselves - a ‘heightened reality' imbued with
the artificial language of painting and theatre, and emphasising light,
colour and texture.
Van Os came to this profession by accident. After training at the Royal
Academy of Art in The Hague, he began his career as an interior
designer. His feeling for film did not surface until 1982, when Eric de
Kuyper asked him to help build the set for Naughty Boys. His work on
that project led to other partnerships, for example with film producers
Kees Kasander and Matthijs van Heijningen, and with directors like
Frans Weisz, George Sluizer, Peter Greenaway and Peter Webber.
In the exhibition, Van Os will present three tableaux that he has
created using objects from the collections of the Gemeentemuseum and
props he has used on film sets. The tableaux relate to three films:
Eline Vere, Girl with a Pearl Earring and The Cook, The Thief, His Wife
& Her Lover. They will be accompanied by clips and stills from
other films, chosen to illustrate Van Os's offbeat approach.
To accompany exhibition Stroom Den Haag published the book "Ben van Os"
with contributions by Lily van Ginneken (chairperson of the jury
and former director of Stroom Den Haag), Katrien Gottlieb and Peter
Greenaway.
- Gemeentemuseum Den Haag, The Hague
- 29 October 2005 - 5 FebruarY 2006