In the mid-1970s the influential stop-motion animators Stephan and Timothy Quay (born 1947) embarked on a series of dark graphite drawings, conceived as imaginary film posters. They kept their first autonomous art project hidden for decades, allowing only a few glimpses to transpire in some of their animation classics such as Nuctura Artificialia, Street of Crocodiles and their live-project Witlold Lutoslawski--Paraphrase on: The Hour We Knew Nothing of Each Other. In hindsight, the Black Drawings can be considered as a blueprint for their future work. This book offers a first in-depth exploration of this important graphic series that reveals many of the themes and techniques that would come to life in their celebrated animation films.
