artnet Magazine

Timothy and Stephen Quay, set for Bruno Schulz’s Street of Crocodies, in "Dormitorium: Film Decors by the Quay Brothers" at Parsons the New School for Design

LITTLE THINGS MEAN A LOT
by Alexandra Anderson-Spivy

Oct. 20, 2009
As the fall art season arrived in an anything-but-a-blockbuster frame of mind, I found myself captivated by some shows of deceptively modest, distinctly eccentric works. The biggest surprise were the dozen or so exquisitely morbid grisaille dioramas bathed in semi-darkness at the remodeled Parsons New School galleries at Fifth Avenue and East 12th Street. This dystopian rummage-sale universe is the creation of a pair of highly original animators best known for their very short, very strange stop-frame films. Timothy and Stephen Quay, reclusive identical twins from Pennsylvania, now living in London, where they hand make their obsessively detailed, miniature architectural fantasies that way out-weird Joseph Cornell and channel Arthur Rackham via Franz Kafka and grim post-war Polish animation.
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Alexandra Anderson-Spivy Archives

Aug. 11, 2009	DANCING WITH THE STARS by Alexandra Anderson-Spivy Serge Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes at 100.

May 12, 2009	JUST FRIENDS by Alexandra Anderson-Spivy The original of Man Ray’s Le Violon d’Ingres, and other gems, at Pace-MacGill.

Feb. 11, 2009	FASHION IS EVERYWHERE by Alexandra Anderson-Spivy A "year of fashion" at the International Center of Photography.

Jan. 8, 2009	ART AND IDEA by Alexandra Anderson-Spivy An acre of Sol LeWitt drawings at Mass MoCA.

Dec. 19, 2008	REAL NORTH AMERICA by Alexandra Anderson-Spivy Neil Jenney’s recent work.

Oct. 9, 2008	NOW YOU SEE IT, NOW YOU DON’T by Alexandra Anderson-Spivy New works by Cecily Brown and Vik Muniz.

Aug. 26, 2008	DOWNEAST ROUNDUP by Alexandra Anderson-Spivy Summer art in Maine, 2008.

July 24, 2008	EVERYTHING PLUS THE KITCHEN SINK by Alexandra Anderson-Spivy "Jess 1923-2004" and two group shows put the spotlight on collage.

June 6, 2008	SINISTER SKIES by Alexandra Anderson-Spivy Roger Brown’s dialogue with disaster.

May 2, 2008	BREATH OF LIFE by Alexandra Anderson-Spivy New works from the George Rickey estate at Marlborough Chelsea and Maxwell Davidson.

Mar. 13, 2008	PLAYING WITH FIRE by Alexandra Anderson-Spivy Cai Guo-Qiang’s "I Want to Believe" at the Guggenheim Museum.

Jan. 9, 2008	THE TRIUMPH OF THE BIG D by Alexandra Anderson-Spivy "Pattern and Decoration" painting returns, in two museum exhibitions.

Oct. 3, 2007	SHARPSHOOTER by Alexandra Anderson-Spivy He’s back: Willoughby Sharp in performance.

July 31, 2007	THE MAGICAL MURPHYS by Alexandra Anderson-Spivy During the Jazz Age, Sara and Gerald Murphy lived life as an artistic exercise.

May 22, 2007	KING OF FASHION by Alexandra Anderson-Spivy Modernist fashion icon Paul Poiret at the Metropolitan Museum.

May 9, 2007	COLETTE IN TRANSIT by Alexandra Anderson-Spivy The celebrated performance artist presents the satin-swathed boudoir from her Maison Lumière.

Apr. 24, 2007	PRIMAVERA by Alexandra Anderson-Spivy Robert Kushner’s new paintings evoke renewed growth and fleeting beauty.

Mar. 23, 2006	NO REWIND by Alexandra Anderson-Spivy The last rites of Nam June Paik.

June. 25, 2001	APPARELED IN CELESTIAL LIGHT by Alexandra Anderson-Spivy A report from James Turrell's Roden Crater, June 2001.