![Tropenmuseum Royal Tropical Institute Objectnumber 60006559 Tableau vivant voorstellende de Goudd](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9d/Tropenmuseum_Royal_Tropical_Institute_Objectnumber_60006559_Tableau_vivant_voorstellende_de_Goudd.jpg)
A (; often shortened to ; plural: ),
French for "living picture", is a static scene containing one or more actors or models. They are stationary and silent, usually in costume, carefully posed, with props and/or scenery, and may be
theatrically lit. It thus combines aspects of theatre and the visual arts.
A tableau may either be 'performed' live, or depicted in
painting
Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a solid surface (called the "matrix" or "support"). The medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush, but other implements, such as knives, sponges, and ...
,
photography
Photography is the art, application, and practice of creating durable images by recording light, either electronically by means of an image sensor, or chemically by means of a light-sensitive material such as photographic film. It is employed ...
and
sculpture
Sculpture is the branch of the visual arts that operates in three dimensions. Sculpture is the three-dimensional art work which is physically presented in the dimensions of height, width and depth. It is one of the plastic arts. Durable sc ...
, such as in many works of the
Romantic,
Aesthetic
Aesthetics, or esthetics, is a branch of philosophy that deals with the nature of beauty and taste, as well as the philosophy of art (its own area of philosophy that comes out of aesthetics). It examines aesthetic values, often expressed th ...
,
Symbolist
Symbolism was a late 19th-century art movement of French and Belgian origin in poetry and other arts seeking to represent absolute truths symbolically through language and metaphorical images, mainly as a reaction against naturalism and realis ...
,
Pre-Raphaelite
The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood (later known as the Pre-Raphaelites) was a group of English painters, poets, and art critics, founded in 1848 by William Holman Hunt, John Everett Millais, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, William Michael Rossetti, James ...
, and
Art Nouveau
Art Nouveau (; ) is an international style of art, architecture, and applied art, especially the decorative arts. The style is known by different names in different languages: in German, in Italian, in Catalan, and also known as the Modern ...
movements.
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, tableaux sometimes featured ('flexible poses') by virtually nude models, providing a form of
erotic
Eroticism () is a quality that causes sexual feelings, as well as a philosophical contemplation concerning the aesthetics of sexual desire, sensuality, and romantic love. That quality may be found in any form of artwork, including painting, scul ...
entertainment, both on stage and in print.
Tableaux continue to the present day in the form of
living statues, street performers who busk by posing in costume.
Origin
Occasionally, a
Mass
Mass is an intrinsic property of a body. It was traditionally believed to be related to the quantity of matter in a physical body, until the discovery of the atom and particle physics. It was found that different atoms and different elementar ...
was punctuated with short dramatic scenes and painting-like . They were a major feature of festivities for royal weddings, coronations and
royal entries into cities. Often the actors imitated statues or paintings, much in the manner of modern street entertainers, but in larger groups, and mounted on elaborate temporary stands along the path of the main procession.
Johan Huizinga
Johan Huizinga (; 7 December 1872 – 1 February 1945) was a Dutch historian and one of the founders of modern cultural history.
Life
Born in Groningen as the son of Dirk Huizinga, a professor of physiology, and Jacoba Tonkens, who died two y ...
, in ''
The Autumn of the Middle Ages
''The Autumn of the Middle Ages'', ''The Waning of the Middle Ages'', or ''Autumntide of the Middle Ages'' (published in 1919 as ''Herfsttij der Middeleeuwen'' and translated into English in 1924, German in 1924, and French in 1932), is the best ...
'', describes the use and design of tableaux vivants in the
late middle ages
The Late Middle Ages or Late Medieval Period was the Periodization, period of European history lasting from AD 1300 to 1500. The Late Middle Ages followed the High Middle Ages and preceded the onset of the early modern period (and in much of Eur ...
. Many paintings and sculptures probably recreate tableaux vivants, by which art historians sometimes account for groups of rather static figures. Artists were often the designers of public pageanty of this sort.
The history of Western visual arts in general, until the modern era, has had a focus on symbolic, arranged presentation, and (aside from direct personal portraiture) was heavily dependent on stationary artists' models in costume – essentially small-scale with the artist as temporary audience. The
Realism
Realism, Realistic, or Realists may refer to:
In the arts
*Realism (arts), the general attempt to depict subjects truthfully in different forms of the arts
Arts movements related to realism include:
*Classical Realism
*Literary realism, a move ...
movement, with more
naturalistic depictions, did not begin until the mid-19th century, a direct reaction against Romanticism and its heavy dependence on stylized format.
On stage
![Tableau vivant by Olga Desmond and Adolf Salge](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c0/Tableau_vivant_by_Olga_Desmond_and_Adolf_Salge._01.jpg)
Before
radio
Radio is the technology of signaling and communicating using radio waves. Radio waves are electromagnetic waves of frequency between 30 hertz (Hz) and 300 gigahertz (GHz). They are generated by an electronic device called a transmit ...
,
film
A film also called a movie, motion picture, moving picture, picture, photoplay or (slang) flick is a work of visual art that simulates experiences and otherwise communicates ideas, stories, perceptions, feelings, beauty, or atmosphere ...
and
television
Television, sometimes shortened to TV, is a telecommunication medium for transmitting moving images and sound. The term can refer to a television set, or the medium of television transmission. Television is a mass medium for advertisin ...
, were popular forms of entertainment, even in American frontier towns. Before the age of color reproduction of images, the was sometimes used to recreate artworks on stage, based on an etching or sketch of a painting. This could be done as an amateur venture in a drawing room, or as a more professionally produced series of presented on a theatre stage, one following another, usually to tell a story without requiring all the usual trappings and production of a full theatre performance. They thus influenced the form taken by later
Victorian and
Edwardian era
The Edwardian era or Edwardian period of British history spanned the reign of King Edward VII, 1901 to 1910 and is sometimes extended to the start of the First World War. The death of Queen Victoria in January 1901 marked the end of the Victori ...
magic lantern
The magic lantern, also known by its Latin name , is an early type of image projector that used pictures—paintings, prints, or photographs—on transparent plates (usually made of glass), one or more lenses, and a light source. Because a si ...
shows, and perhaps also sequential narrative
comic strip
A comic strip is a sequence of drawings, often cartoons, arranged in interrelated panels to display brief humor or form a narrative, often serialized, with text in balloons and captions. Traditionally, throughout the 20th and into the 21st ...
s (which first appeared in modern form in the late 1890s).
were often performed as the basis for school
Nativity play
A Nativity play or Christmas pageant is a play which recounts the story of the Nativity of Jesus. It is usually performed at Christmas
Christmas is an annual festival commemorating Nativity of Jesus, the birth of Jesus, Jesus Christ, obse ...
s in England during the Victorian period; the custom is still practised at
Loughborough High School
)
, established =
, closed =
, type = Independent
, religion = Christian
, president =
, head_label = Headmistress
, head ...
(believed to be one of England's oldest grammar schools for girls). Several are performed each year at the school carol service, including the depiction of an engraving (in which the subjects are painted and dressed completely grey).
Theatrical censorship in Britain and the United States forbade actresses to move when nude or semi-nude on stage, so had a place in risqué entertainment for many years. In the early 1900s, German dancer
Olga Desmond
Olga Desmond (born Olga Antonie Sellin 2 November 1890, Allenstein, East Prussia ow Olsztyn, Poland– 2 August 1964, Berlin) was a German dancer, actress, art model and living statue.
Biography
Olga Antonie Sellin, born November 2, 1890, ...
appeared in ''Schönheitsabende'' ('Evenings of Beauty') in which she posed nude in "living pictures", imitating classical works of art.
In the nineteenth century, took such titles as "Nymphs Bathing" and "Diana the Huntress" and were to be found at such places as the Hall of Rome in
Great Windmill Street
Great Windmill Street is a thoroughfare running north–south in Soho, London, crossed by Shaftesbury Avenue.
The street has had a long association with music and entertainment, most notably the Windmill Theatre, and is now home to the Ripley' ...
, London. Other venues were the
Coal Hole
A coal hole is a hatch in the pavement (sidewalk, in US usage) above an underground coal bunker. They are sometimes found outside houses that existed during the period when coal was widely used for domestic heating from the early 19th century t ...
in the
Strand
Strand may refer to:
Topography
*The flat area of land bordering a body of water, a:
** Beach
** Shoreline
* Strand swamp, a type of swamp habitat in Florida
Places Africa
* Strand, Western Cape, a seaside town in South Africa
* Strand Street ...
and the Cyder Cellar in
Maiden Lane. Nude and semi-nude were also a frequent feature of variety shows in the US: first
on Broadway in
New York City
New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...
, then elsewhere in the country. The
Ziegfeld Follies
The ''Ziegfeld Follies'' was a series of elaborate theatrical revue productions on Broadway in New York City from 1907 to 1931, with renewals in 1934 and 1936. They became a radio program in 1932 and 1936 as ''The Ziegfeld Follies of the Air ...
featured such from 1917. The
Windmill Theatre
The Windmill Theatre in Great Windmill Street, London, was a variety and revue theatre best known for its nude ''tableaux vivants'', which began in 1932 and lasted until its reversion to a cinema in 1964. Many prominent British comedians of t ...
in London (1932–1964) featured nude on stage; it was the first, and for many years the only, venue for them in 20th-century London.
were often included in fairground sideshows (as seen in the 1961 film ''
A Taste of Honey
''A Taste of Honey'' is the first play by the British dramatist Shelagh Delaney, written when she was 19. It was intended as a novel, but she turned it into a play because she hoped to revitalise British theatre and address social issues that ...
''). Such shows had largely died out by the 1970s. remain a major attraction at the annual
Pageant of the Masters The Pageant of the Masters is an annual festival held by the Festival of Arts in Laguna Beach, California.
The event is known for its ''tableaux vivants'' or " living pictures" in which classical and contemporary works of art are recreated by real ...
in
Laguna Beach, California
Laguna Beach (; ''Laguna'', Spanish language, Spanish for "Lagoon") is a seaside resort city located in southern Orange County, California, in the United States. It is known for its mild year-round climate, scenic coves, environmental preservat ...
.
Photographic ''tableaux''
Jean-François Chevrier was the first to use the term in relation to a form of art photography, which began in the 1970s and 1980s in an essay titled "The Adventures of the Picture Form in the History of Photography" in 1989.
The initial translation of this text substitutes the English word ''picture'' for the French word . However
Michael Fried
Michael Martin Fried (born April 12, 1939 in New York City) is a modernist art critic and art historian. He studied at Princeton University and Harvard University and was a Rhodes Scholar at Merton College, Oxford. He is the J.R. Herbert Boone Pr ...
retains the French term when referring to Chevrier's essay, because according to Fried (2008), there is no direct translation into English for in this sense. While ''picture'' is similar, "... it lacks the connotations of constructedness, of being the product of an intellectual act that the French word carries." (p. 146)
Other texts
and
Clement Greenberg's theory of medium specificity also cover this topic.
The key characteristics of the contemporary photographic according to Chevrier are, firstly:
They are designed and produced for the wall. summoning a confrontational experience on the part of the spectator that sharply contrasts with the habitual processes of appropriation and projection whereby photographic images are normally received and "consumed" (p. 116)
By this, Chevrier notes that scale and size is obviously important if the pictures are to "hold the wall". But size has another function; it distances the viewer from the object, requiring one to stand back from the picture to take it all in. This "confrontational" experience, Fried notes,
is actually quite a large break from the conventional reception of photography, which up to that point was often consumed in books or magazines.
The photographic has its roots not in the theatrical , but in
pictorialist
Pictorialism is an international style and aesthetic movement that dominated photography during the later 19th and early 20th centuries. There is no standard definition of the term, but in general it refers to a style in which the photographer ha ...
photography, such as that of
Alfred Stieglitz
Alfred Stieglitz (January 1, 1864 – July 13, 1946) was an American photographer and modern art promoter who was instrumental over his 50-year career in making photography an accepted art form. In addition to his photography, Stieglitz was kno ...
, a movement with its roots in
Aestheticism
Aestheticism (also the Aesthetic movement) was an art movement in the late 19th century which privileged the aesthetic value of literature, music and the arts over their socio-political functions. According to Aestheticism, art should be pro ...
, which already made heavy use of the as a non-theatrical visual art style. Pictorialism, according to
Jeff Wall
Jeffrey Wall, Order of Canada, OC, Royal Society of Canada, RSA (born September 29, 1946) is a Canadian artist best known for his large-scale back-lit Cibachrome photographs and art history writing. Early in his career, he helped define the Van ...
could be seen as an attempt by photographers to imitate painting (perhaps unsuccessfully):
Pictorialist photography was dazzled by the spectacle of Western painting and attempted, to some extent, to imitate it in acts of pure composition. Lacking the means to make the surface of its pictures unpredictable and important, the first phase of Pictorialism, Stieglitz's phase, emulated the fine graphic arts, re-invented the beautiful look, set standards for gorgeousness of composition, and faded. (p. 75)
However photography did have the ability to unpredictable and spontaneous. This was achieved by making photographs related to the inherent capabilities of the camera itself. And this, Wall argues,
was a direct result of
photojournalism
Photojournalism is journalism that uses images to tell a news story. It usually only refers to still images, but can also refer to video used in broadcast journalism. Photojournalism is distinguished from other close branches of photography (such ...
, and the
mass media
Mass media refers to a diverse array of media technologies that reach a large audience via mass communication. The technologies through which this communication takes place include a variety of outlets.
Broadcast media transmit information ...
and
pop culture
Pop or POP may refer to:
Arts, entertainment, and media Music
* Pop music, a musical genre Artists
* POP, a Japanese idol group now known as Gang Parade
* Pop!, a UK pop group
* Pop! featuring Angie Hart, an Australian band
Albums
* Pop (Gas al ...
industries.
By divesting itself of the encumbrances and advantages inherited from older art forms, reportage, or the spontaneous fleeting aspect of the photographic image pushes toward a discovery of qualities apparently intrinsic to the medium, qualities that must necessarily distinguish the medium from others and through the self-examination of which it can emerge as a modernist art on a plane with others. (pp. 76–78)
The argument is that, unlike most other art forms, photography can profit from the capture of chance occurrences. Through this process – the snapshot, the "accidental" image – photography invents its own concept of the picture: a hybrid form of the "Western picture" (pictorialist photography) and the spontaneous snapshot. This is the stage whereby Wall
argues that photography enters a "modernist dialectic". Wall states that unpredictability is key to modern aesthetics. This new concept of the picture, which Wall proposes, with the compositional aspects of the Western picture combined with the unpredictability that the camera affords through its shutter, can be seen in the work of many contemporary photographic artists including
Luc Delahaye
Luc Delahaye (born 1962) is a French photographer known for his large-scale color works depicting conflicts, world events or social issues. His pictures are characterized by detachment, directness and rich details, a documentary approach which is ...
,
Andreas Gursky
Andreas Gursky (born 15 January 1955) is a German photographer and professor at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, Germany.
He is known for his large format architecture and landscape colour photographs, often using a high point of view. His works ...
,
Thomas Struth
Thomas Struth (born 11 October 1954) is a German photographer who is best known for his ''Museum Photographs'' series, family portraits and black and white photographs of the streets of Düsseldorf and New York taken in the 1970s. Struth lives ...
,
Irene Caesar, and
Philip-Lorca diCorcia
Philip-Lorca diCorcia (born 1951) is an American photographer, living in New York City. He teaches at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut.Release: David Zwirner - Philip-Lorca diCorcia: ''Thousand'' (February 27 - March 28, 2009). Retrieved ...
.
The ''tableau'' as a form still dominates the art photography market. As Fried notes: "Arguably the most decisive development in the rise of the new art photography has been the emergence, starting in the late 1970s and gaining impetus in the 1980s and after, of what the French critic Jean-François Chevrier has called the "''tableau'' form" (p. 143).
However, there appears to be only a handful of young, emerging artists working within the ''tableau'' form. Examples include
Florian Maier Aichen
Florian may refer to:
People
* Florian (name), including a list of people and fictional characters with the given name or surname
* Florian, Roman emperor in 276 AD
* Saint Florian (250 – c. 304 AD), patron saint of Poland and Upper Austria, al ...
, Matthew Porter and
Peter Funch
Peter may refer to:
People
* List of people named Peter, a list of people and fictional characters with the given name
* Peter (given name)
** Saint Peter (died 60s), apostle of Jesus, leader of the early Christian Church
* Peter (surname), a su ...
. More recently, Canadian artist,
Sylvia Grace Borda, has worked since 2013 to continue to stage ''tableaux'' for the camera within the Google Street View engine. Her work creates 360° immersive ''tableau vivant'' images for the viewer to explore. Through her efforts to pioneer the ''tableaux vivant'' for online exploration, she and her collaborator, John M. Lynch, won the
Lumen Prize
The Lumen Prize is an international award which celebrates art created with technology, especially digital art.
Overview
The prize was founded by Carla Rapoport in 2012, The Lumen Prize has visited more than ten cities around the world includin ...
2016 for Web Arts.
Film
In
Pier Paolo Pasolini
Pier Paolo Pasolini (; 5 March 1922 – 2 November 1975) was an Italian poet, filmmaker, writer and intellectual who also distinguished himself as a journalist, novelist, translator, playwright, visual artist and actor. He is considered one of ...
's 1963 film ''
La ricotta'', a film maker tries to have actors represent two paintings, by
Jacopo Pontormo
Jacopo Carucci (May 24, 1494 – January 2, 1557), usually known as ''Jacopo da Pontormo'', ''Jacopo Pontormo'', or simply Pontormo, was an Italian Mannerist painter and portraitist from the Florentine School. His work represents a profound sty ...
and
Rosso Fiorentino
Giovanni Battista di Jacopo (8 March 1495 in Gregorian style, or 1494 according to the calculation of times in Florence where the year began on 25 March – 14 November 1540), known as Rosso Fiorentino (meaning "Red Florentine" in Italian) ...
, of the Passion of Jesus.
The 1969 film ''
The Color of Pomegranates
''The Color of Pomegranates'' is a 1969 Soviet Armenian art film written and directed by Sergei Parajanov. The film is a poetic treatment of the life of 18th-century Armenian poet and troubadour Sayat-Nova. It has appeared in many polls as one of ...
'', directed by Sergei Parajanov, presents a loose biography of the Armenian poet Sayat Nova in a series of ''tableaux vivants'' of Armenian costume, embroidery and religious rituals depicting scenes and verses from the poet's life.
The 2013 film, ''
A Field in England
''A Field in England'' is a 2013 British historical psychological horror film directed by Ben Wheatley. The film, shot in black-and-white, is set during the mid-17th-century English Civil War. The film was released on 2013 on multiple platforms ...
'', makes use of the effect to add to the general occult look of the film.
There is a 2014 Estonian feature film produced entirely in ''tableau'' format titled ''
In the Crosswind
''In the Crosswind'' ( et, Risttuules) is a 2014 Estonian drama film directed by Martti Helde. It was screened in the Contemporary World Cinema section at the 2014 Toronto International Film Festival. The film is about the forced deportation by ...
''.
See also
*
Historical reenactment
Historical reenactment (or re-enactment) is an educational entertainment, educational or entertainment activity in which mainly amateur hobbyists and history enthusiasts dress in historic uniforms or costumes and follow a plan to recreate aspect ...
*
Living history
Living history is an activity that incorporates historical tools, activities and dress into an interactive presentation that seeks to give observers and participants a sense of stepping back in time. Although it does not necessarily seek to ree ...
*
Living statue
A living statue is a performer who poses as a statue or mannequin, usually with realistic statue-like makeup, Performances are commonly on the street busking but may also be at events where the artist is paid. A living statue attraction, as a pe ...
*
Mannequin Challenge
The Mannequin Challenge was a viral Internet video trend which became popular in November 2016. In this challenge, participants have to stay still in action like a mannequin while a moving camera films them, often with the song " Black Beatles ...
* ''
Oberammergau Passion Play
The Oberammergau Passion Play (german: Oberammergauer Passionsspiele) is a passion play that has been performed every 10 years from 1634 to 1674 and each decadal year since 1680 (with a few exceptions) by the inhabitants of the village of Obera ...
''. This
passion play is played every ten years in
Oberammergau
Oberammergau is a municipality in the district of Garmisch-Partenkirchen, in Bavaria, Germany. The small town on the Ammer River is known for its woodcarvers and woodcarvings, for its NATO School, and around the world for its 380-year tradition of ...
, Germany. It includes several ''tableaux'' with scenes from the
Old Testament
The Old Testament (often abbreviated OT) is the first division of the Christian biblical canon, which is based primarily upon the 24 books of the Hebrew Bible or Tanakh, a collection of ancient religious Hebrew writings by the Israelites. The ...
.
References
Further reading
*
*
*
External links
* (1860 text describing how to produce Tableaux Vivants)
Kate Matthews Collection(Photograph collection include
83 examplesof tableaux vivants)
{{Authority control
Theatrical genres
Medieval drama
Nudity in theatre and dance