The Quay Brothers’ Universum

A sourcebook on the Quays’ gothic aesthetic

American-born, UK-based identical twins Stephen and Timothy Quay (born 1947), better known as the Quay Brothers, are internationally celebrated for their incredibly inventive, otherworldly films that deploy objects, puppets and people in gloomy fantasies and haunted visions, creating a fetishized erotics of ＂stuff＂ in which dead matter mocks human form. Over the course of their careers, they have worked across disciplines to develop an aesthetic that manages to inspire, confound and often disturb their viewers. The Quays are also well known for the diverse cultural influences referenced throughout their films and designs, from Polish modernist poster design to antiquarians such as Athanasius Kircher, authors such as Robert Walser, Franz Kafka and Bruno Schulz, and artists such as Adolf Wölfli. Published for an exhibition at the Eye Filmmuseum in Amsterdam, this Quay sourcebook presents their animated films, set designs (or ＂Dormitoriums,＂ as the brothers have named them) and works on paper against the vast constellation of their influences--from Wunderkammer artifacts and anatomical models to Eastern European posters, other animation films, drawings from the famous Prinzhorn Collection, scores by Karlheinz Stockhausen and other inspirational sources.