• Corpus ID: 193116347

The Quay Brothers: Into a Metaphysical Playroom

@inproceedings{Buchan2011TheQB,
  title={The Quay Brothers: Into a Metaphysical Playroom},
  author={Suzanne Buchan},
  year={2011}
}

• Suzanne Buchan
• Published 7 March 2011
• Art

This work is the first thorough analysis of the creative oeuvre of the Quay Brothers. Known for their animation shorts that rely on puppetry, miniatures, and stop-motion techniques, their fiercely idiosyncratic films are fertile fields for Suzanne Buchan's engaging descriptions and provocative insights into the Quays' art-and into the art of independent puppet animation.

Buchan's aesthetic investigation stems from extensive access to the Quay Brothers' artistic practices and work, which spans animation and live-action film, stage design and illustration. Discussions of their films' literary origins, space, puppets, montage, and the often-overlooked world of sound and music in animation shed new light on the expressive world that the Quay Brothers generate out of their materials to create the poetic alchemy of their films.

At once a biography of the Quays' artistic trajectory and a detailed examination of one of their best-known films, Street of Crocodiles, this book goes further and provides interdisciplinary methodologies and tools for the analysis of animation.

Editorial Reviews
"Suzanne Buchan’s book offers a welcome introduction to the art of the Brothers Quay, with an emphasis on a detailed reading of their animated film, Street of Crocodiles. The Quay Brothers offers engaging descriptions and thought-provoking insights into the Quays’ art specifically and into the art of animation generally." —Thomas Lamarre, McGill University

"To use the term Buchan cites from Joyce, this is a fascinating transluding of the Quays’ work into prose. Based on several years’ affectionate acquaintance with the pair, The Quay Brothers is entertaining, often innovative, and highly evocative. A great book on the Quays and on the British scene since the 1970s, it also opens up new avenues for animation and film studies." —Sean Cubitt, University of Melbourne