Kubrick’s “A Clockwork Orange” – Collaborators

John Barry
England, 1935-1979
Production design sketches

“A Clockwork Orange” Collaborators

“The erotic decor in the film suggests a slightly futuristic period for the story. The assumption being that erotic art will eventually become popular art, and just as you now buy African wildlife paintings in “Woolworth’s,” you may one day buy erotica. The violence in the story has to be given sufficient dramatic weight so that the moral dilemma it poses can be seen in the right context.” —Stanley Kubrick

The look of “A Clockwork Orange” was inspired by contemporary art. The furniture in the Korova Milk Bar was adapted from the sculpture of Allen Jones.

Kubrick had seen Jones’s furniture sculpture in an exhibition and approached the sculptor about using the works in the film, but they could not come to an agreement on rights to the sculptures’ reproduction . Jones, also the creator of the Starchild in “2001,” collaborated with production designer John Barry on the design of the Milk Maids for the film.

Dutch sculptor Herman Makkink created the four ceramic Christs dancing as if in a musical comedy, that ornament Alex’s room. The walls of the Alexanders’ house and those of the Catlady are decorated with contemporary paintings, including many by Christiane Kubrick, whose large canvas “Seedboxes” is clearly visible in one of the scenes of “ultraviolence.”