Brothers Quay - Careers

Careers

The Quay Brothers reside and work in England, having moved there in 1969 to study at the Royal College of Art, London after studying illustration at the Philadelphia College of Art, now the University of the Arts in Philadelphia. In England they made their first short films, which no longer exist after the only print was irreparably damaged. They spent some time in the Netherlands in the 1970s and then returned to England where they teamed up with another Royal College student, Keith Griffiths, who produced all of their films. The trio formed Koninck Studios in 1980, which is currently based in Southwark, south London.

The Quay Brothers' works (1979–present) show a wide range of often esoteric influences, starting with the Polish animators Walerian Borowczyk and Jan Lenica and continuing with the writers Franz Kafka, Bruno Schulz, Robert Walser and Michel de Ghelderode, puppeteers Wladyslaw Starewicz and Richard Teschner and composers Leoš Janáček, Zdeněk Liška and Leszek Jankowski, the last of whom has created many original scores for their work. Czech animator Jan Švankmajer, for whom they named one of their films (The Cabinet of Jan Švankmajer), is also frequently cited as a major influence, but they actually discovered his work relatively late, in 1983, by which time their characteristic style and preoccupations had been fully formed. At a panel discussion with Daniel Bird and Andrzej Klimowski at the Aurora festival Norwich they emphasized the more significant influence on their work was Walerian Borowczyk, who made both animation shorts and live-action features.

Most of their animation films feature puppets made of doll parts and other organic and inorganic materials, often partially disassembled, in a dark, moody atmosphere. Perhaps their best known work is Street of Crocodiles, based on the short novel of the same name by the Polish author and artist Bruno Schulz. This short film was selected by director and animator Terry Gilliam as one of the ten best animated films of all time, and critic Jonathan Romney included it on his list of the ten best films in any medium (for Sight and Sound's 2002 critics' poll). They have made two feature-length live action films: Institute Benjamenta, or This Dream People Call Human Life and The Piano Tuner Of Earthquakes. They also directed an animated sequence in the film Frida.

With very few exceptions, their films have no meaningful spoken dialogue—most have no spoken content at all, while some, like The Comb (From the Museums of Sleep) (1990) include multilingual background gibberish that is not supposed to be coherently understood. Accordingly, their films are highly reliant on their music scores, many of which have been written especially for them by the Polish composer Leszek Jankowski. In 2000, they contributed a short film to the BBC's Sound On Film series in which they visualised a 20-minute piece by the avant-garde composer Karlheinz Stockhausen. Whenever possible, the Quays prefer to work with pre-recorded music, though Gary Tarn's score for The Phantom Museum had to be added afterwards when it proved impossible to licence music by the Czech composer Zdeněk Liška.

They have created music videos for His Name Is Alive ("Are We Still Married", "Can't Go Wrong Without You"), Michael Penn ("Long Way Down (Look What the Cat Drug In)") and 16 Horsepower ("Black Soul Choir"). Some people mistakenly believe that the Quays are responsible for several music videos for Tool, but those videos were created by Fred Stuhr and member Adam Jones, whose work is influenced by the Quays. Although they worked on Peter Gabriel's seminal video "Sledgehammer" (1986) as animators, this was directed by Stephen R. Johnson and the Quays were unhappy with their contribution, believing it to be more imitative of Švankmajer's work than truly distinctive in its own right.

Before turning to film, the Quays worked as professional illustrators. The first edition of Anthony Burgess' novel The Clockwork Testament, or Enderby's End, feature their drawings before the start of each chapter. Nearly three decades before directly collaborating with Stockhausen, they designed the cover of the book Stockhausen: Conversations with the Composer (ed. Jonathan Cott, Simon & Schuster, 1973). After designing book covers for Gothic and science fiction book cover commissions they did while in Philadelphia, the Quays have created suggestive designs for a variety of publications that seem to reflect not only their own interests in particular authors, covers for Italo Calvino, Louis-Ferdinand Céline or Mark le Fanu's study of the films of Andrei Tarkovsky, but also in themes and motifs that these authors develop. Literary texts are inspirational sources for almost all of their film projects, whether they serve as a point of departure for their own ideas or as a textual basis for filmic scenarios, and not as scripts or screenplays. The prowess in illustration and calligraphy seeps increasingly into many formal elements in their later films, evident as graphic embellishment in the set decoration, or their particular use of patterns in the puppets' costume design. Titles, intertitles and credits appear in a variety of handwritten styles.

The critical success of Street of Crocodiles gave the Quay Brothers artistic freedom to explore a shift in subject matter, in part originating in literary and poetic sources that led to exploration of new aesthetic forms, but also because they were able to make extensive experiments in technique, both with cameras and on large stage sets. The Quays are best known for their puppet and feature length films. Less known, but no less incisive in their creative development is their intense engagement in stage design for opera, ballet and theatre: since 1988, the Quays have created sets and projections for performing arts productions on international stages. Their work at miniature scale has translated into large-scale decors for the theatre and opera productions of director Richard Jones: Prokofiev's The Love for Three Oranges; Feydeau's "A Flea in Her Ear"; Tchaikovsky's Mazeppa; and Molière's "Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme". Their set design for a revival of Ionesco's "The Chairs" was nominated for a Tony Award in 1998. The Quays' excursion into feature films and live-action dance films are by no means an indication of a move away from animation and the literature that inspires them—on the contrary, this next film explores the potential which slumbers in the combination of these cinematic techniques. Their puppet animation set designs have been curated as an internationally touring exhibition called "Dormitorium" and most recently on display in 2010 at Parsons School of Design, New York.

The Quay Brothers are regular guests at film festivals, art colleges and universities, most recently at The European Graduate School in Saas-Fee, Switzerland.

In June, 2010, The College of Physicians of Philadelphia received a grant from the Philadelphia Exhibitions Initiative of the Pew Charitable Trusts for $287,000. The Quays were commissioned to produce a new film entitled Anatomica Asthetica. The film is their first produced in the United States, and focuses on the history and collections of the College's famed Mütter Museum. It is expected to be released in Fall 2011 with symposia at The College of Physicians of Philadelphia in Pennsylvania; New York City's Museum of Modern Art; and the Museum of Jurassic Technology in Los Angeles.

The Brothers Quay were commissioned by Leeds Canvas, a group of eight cultural organisations in Leeds, UK, to create in May 2012 a major city-wide art installation, OverWorlds & UnderWorlds. The commission was one of twelve Artists Taking the Lead projects around the UK, Arts Council England's flagship contribution to the London 2012 Cultural Olympiad.