MoMA: The Quay Brothers Exhibit

The Quay Brothers Exhibit

A Museum of Modern Art Exhibit

An event of 2012

The Quay Brothers Exhibit

·         I liked the exhibit a lot for its macabre tones.

·         The exhibit was on two floors, the second floor and the basement, of the MoMA

·         There were noted displays of the puppets and the diagrams of the works they have made, and they also included the short films that the Quay brothers directed, animated and/or were influenced by.

·         The exhibit starts with a biography of them and their relations to their hard working mother, in addition to the artists that influenced them greatly.

·         The Quay Brothers notably studied in their home state of Pennsylvania but had to find work in England by the BBC as their work was deemed too macabre for American tastes at the time.

·         The entire exhibit was in a dark lighted room where the only light sources were from the displays with their own distorted lenses to look into or the films to which the Quay Brothers worked on.

·         The tones of the works that the Quay Brothers worked on were mostly on the macabre and the tragic, as a more horror themed work was what they were aimed towards.

·         Of the films that they worked on was the acclaimed “Street of Crocodiles” which was supposed to convey the cultural decay of the metropolitian life.

·         Other films that they did were a dance choreography work that a male and female dancer performed in the recording and several commercials with bleak themes like the tragic death of the weeds in a “Raid” commercial.

·         The figures on display had noted wiring and photorealistic eyes on the figurines, in that most of the figures were made of wires or realistic looking porcelain and had eyes which were shaped with irises and such to a fine detail.

·         They made a tribute piece to the Metamorphosis where a man became a giant cockroach and hid under his bed.

·         Most of the attending patrons were there on Friday due to an event the MoMA was hosting, but the majority of the viewers to the Quay Brothers exhibit were young adults to much older adults.

·         The Quay Brothers were in fact rejected once by the BBC for a work relating to pens that they made as it was deemed too bizarre even for British tastes.

·         One of the commercials for Doritos in a theater had a couple, a young boy and various other adults watching pornography in a nonchalant manner.

·         There were included post-modern displays as with a display of a deer with antlers sticking out of the painting and a chimney area with a viewing scope with maid shoes on the top of it where one watched a recording of a maid heating a building.