MoMA: Quay Brothers: On Deciphering the Pharmacist's Prescription for Lip-Reading Puppets

August 12, 2012–January 7, 2013

This MoMA gallery exhibition and accompanying film retrospective will be the first presentation of the Quay Brothers' work in all their fields of creative activity. Internationally renowned moving image artists and designers, the Quay Brothers were born outside Philadelphia and have worked from their London studio, Atelier Koninck, since the late 1970s. For over 30 years, they have been in the avant-garde of stop-motion puppet animation and live-action movie-making in the Eastern European tradition of filmmakers like Walerian Borowczyk and Jan Svankmajer and the Russian Yuri Norstein, and have championed a design aesthetic influenced by the graphic surrealism of Polish poster artists of the 1950s and 1960s. Beginning with their student films in 1971, the Quay Brothers have produced over 45 moving image works, including two features, music videos, dance films, documentaries, and signature personal works, including The Street of Crocodiles (1986), the Stille Nacht series (1988–2008), Institute Benjamenta (1995), andIn Absentia (2000). They have also designed sets and projections for opera, drama, and concert performances such as Tchaikovsky’sMazeppa (1991), Ionesco’s The Chairs (Tony-nominated design, 1997), Richard Ayre’s The Cricket Recovers (2005), and recent site-specific pieces based on the work of Bartók and Kafka.

In addition to their better known films, this exhibition will include never-before-seen moving image works and graphic design, drawings, and calligraphy, presenting animated and live-action films alongside installations, objects, and works on paper.

Book from the Exhibit will be here soon

MoMA: "Tim Burton" Curator Will Spotlight the Art, Design, and Film of the Brothers Quay

Quay Brothers: On Deciphering the Pharmacist's Prescription for Lip-Reading Puppets

August 12, 2012–January 7, 2013

Stephen and Timothy Quay (June 17, 1947 are identical twin brothers who are often referred to as the Brothers Quay or Quay Brothers. They work primarily in animation films that feature puppets partially put together from doll parts. Their works are often dark and moody and Gothic in nature with virtually no dialogue or dialogue with no meaning. Their work of avant-garde of stop-motion puppet animation and live-action movie-making has been compared to Eastern European tradition of filmmakers like Walerian Borowczyk and Jan Svankmajer and the Russian Yuri Norstein. Quay Brothers films are highly reliant on their music scores, many of which have been written especially for them by the Polish composer Leszek Jankowski. Although best known for their work in film, they have collaborated with the theatre creating set design for ballet and opera.

The Museum of Modern Art announced that this August they will present a Quay retrospective, their first comprehensive exhibit, presenting the Brothers’ work in all their creative endeavors. The show will be curated by Ron Magliozzi, who also helped put together MoMA’s Tim Burton show. The exhibit will bring toether their films, their never-before-seen moving image works, drawings and objects.

The show, which is titled "Quay Brothers: On Deciphering the Pharmacist's Prescription for Lip-Reading Puppets," seems to develop a relationship between the Brothers and the Institution: Last year, the institution was the venue for of the Brothers’ “Through the Weeping Glass: On the Consolations of Life Everlasting.” 


Read more about the Quay Brothers:


ArtInfo: MoMA Goes Goth, Again: "Tim Burton" Curator Will Spotlight the Art,Design, and Film of the Brothers Quay

NPR:  Quays Focus 'Weeping Glass' On The Mutter Museum

Zeigeist Films: The Short films of the Quay Brothers

European Graduate School: Stephen and Timothy Quay

Mutter Museum: The Quay Brothers Make a Film at the Mutter


Note: The Quay Brothers do not have an official site