Tableau vivant
Encyclopedia
Tableau vivant is French for "living picture." The term describes a striking group of suitably costumed actors or artist's models, carefully posed and often theatrically
lit. Throughout the duration of the display, the people shown do not speak or move. The approach thus marries the art forms of the stage with those of painting/photography, and as such it has been of interest to modern photographers. The most recent hey-day of the tableau vivant was the 19th century with virtually nude tableaux vivants or "poses plastiques" providing a form of erotic entertainment.
Occasionally, a Mass
was punctuated by short dramatic scenes and tableaux. They were a major feature of festivities for royal weddings, coronations and Royal entries into cities. Often the actors imitated statues, much in the way of modern street entertainers, but in larger groups, and mounted on elaborate temporary stands along the path of the main procession.
, film
and television
, tableaux vivants were popular forms of entertainment. Before the age of colour reproduction of images the tableau vivant (often abbreviated simply to tableau) was sometimes used to recreate paintings "on stage", based on an etching or sketch of the painting. This could be done as an amateur venture in a drawing room
, or as a more professionally produced series of tableaux presented on a theatre stage, one following another, usually to tell a story without requiring all the usual trappings of a "live" theatre performance. They thus 'educated' their audience to understand the form taken by later Victorian
and Edwardian era magic lantern
shows, and perhaps also sequential narrative comic strip
s (which first appeared in modern form in the late 1890s).
Since English stage censorship
often strictly forbade actresses to move when nude or semi-nude
on stage, tableaux vivants also had a place in presenting risqué entertainment at special shows. In the nineteenth century they 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
, London. Other notorious venues were the Coal Hole in the Strand
and The Cyder Cellar in Maiden Lane
. In the twentieth century London the Windmill Theatre
(1932–64) provided erotic entertainment in the form of nude tableaux vivants on stage. Such entertainment was also to be seen at fairground sideshows (e.g.: seen in the film A Taste of Honey
). Such shows had largely died out by the 1970s.
These "tableaux vivants" were often performed as the basis for school nativity plays in England during the Victorian period. Today, the custom is now only practised in a single English school - Loughborough High School (the oldest all-girl school in England, founded in 1850). Ten tableaux are performed each year at the school carol service: including the depiction of an all-grey engraving (in which the subjects are painted completely grey).
In the early years of the 20th century the German dancer Olga Desmond
caused scandals with her “Evenings of Beauty” (Schönheitsabende) in which she posed nude in "living pictures", imitating classical works of art.
A tableaux vivant-style production called the Pageant of the Masters
has been held in Laguna Beach, California
every summer since 1933 (with the exception of four years during World War II
). It involves hundreds of volunteers drawn from the surrounding area and attracts over a hundred thousand visitors annually. The festival recreates famous works of art on the stage. It has a different theme each year, but always features a recreation of Leonardo Da Vinci
's "The Last Supper." The only time Da Vinci's "Last Supper" did not appear was when the festival's theme was Salvador Dali
, in which case Dali's "Last Supper" filled the void.
Yet another tableaux vivant-style production called the Pageant of our Lord
has been held in Rolling Hills Estates, California
every spring since 1985. This production differs only in that its focus is exclusively on the life of Jesus Christ as told through religious works of art. Like the Pageant of the Masters, this production relies on hundreds of volunteers from the surrounding area and has attracted over two-hundred thousand people. It has featured art pieces such as Michelangelo Bounarroti's Pieta, Claus Sleuter's The Well of Moses, De L' Esprie's Coming Home, and many others.
was the first to coin the term Tableau in relation to a form of art photography, which began in the 1970s and 80s in an essay titled The Adventures of the Picture Form in the History of Photography in 1989. It must be noted that the initial translation of this text substitutes the French word 'Tableau' for the English word 'Picture.' However Michael Fried retains the French word of 'Tableau' when referring to Chevrier's essay, because according to Fried (2008), there is no direct translation into English for the French word Tableau. Picture is similar, however “…it lacks the connotations of constructedness, of being the product of an intellectual act that the French word carries.”
Other key texts are Chevrier‘s (2006) The Tableau and The Document of Experience. In Ed. Weski, T. Click Double Click: The Documentary Factor. And Jeff Wall’s (1998) Marks of Indifference: Aspects of Photography in, or as, Conceptual Art. In Ed. Janus, E. Veronica’s Revenge: Contemporary Perspectives on Photography. Clement Greenberg’s
theory of Medium Specificity is also important to its understanding.
The key characteristics of the contemporary photographic tableau according to Jean-Francois 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."
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 you from the object. It
makes you stand back from the picture to take it all in. This confrontational experience, Fried (2008) 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 tableau has its roots in pictorialist photography (see Alfred Stieglitz
) and not the Tableau Vivant. Pictorialism, according to Jeff Wall
(1998) could be seen as an attempt by photographers to unsuccessfully imitate painting:
"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."
Pictorialism failed according to Jeff Wall
because photographers lacked the means to make their surfaces unpredictable. However Photography did have the ability to become unpredictable and spontaneous. This was achieved by making photographs, related to the inherent capabilities of the camera itself. And this Jeff Wall
(1998) argues was a direct result of photo-journalism and the media/culture 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."
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 or pictorialist photography and the spontaneous snapshot. This is the stage whereby Jeff Wall (1998) argues that photography enters a 'modernist dialectic.' Wall claims that unpredictability is key to modern aesthetics. This new concept of the picture, which Jeff 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
, Andreas Gursky
, Thomas Struth
and Philip Lorca-Dicorcia.
The Tableau as a form still dominates the Art Photography market. As Michael Fried in 2008, notes:
"Arguably the most decisive development in the rise of the new art photography has been the emergence, starting in the late 1970’s and gaining impetus in the 1980’s and after, of what the French critic Jean-Francois Chevrier has called "The Tableau Form."
However their appears to be only a handful of young, emerging artists working within the Tableau form. Good examples include Florian Maier Aichen, Maxim Kelly, Matthew Porter and Peter Funch.
For a piece of art to qualify as tableau it must be produced for the gallery wall (large print), must be pictorial (beautifully composed) and must take into consideration the intrinsic qualities of the camera (chance). Digital manipulation is often a prominent technique used in the creation of work within the Tableau Form, since photography is often said to lack human agency and one of the salient qualities of the Tableau is that it must be an object of thought.
Suggested Reading:
Chevrier, J. (1989) The Adventures of the Picture Form in the History of Photography. In Ed. Fogle, D. (2003) The Last Picture Show: Artists Using Photography 1960-1982. Minneapolis: Walker Art Centre.
Chevrier, J. (2006) The Tableau and The Document of Experience. In Ed. Weski, T. Click Double Click: The Documentary Factor. Munich: Haus Der Kunst and Brussels: Centre for Fine Art.
Fried, M. (2008) Why Photography Matters as Art as Never Before. New Haven/London: Yale University Press.
Greenberg, C. (1965) Modernist Painting in. Harrison, C. Wood, P. ed. (2003) Art in Theory 1900-2000. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.
Kracauer, S. (1960) Theory of film: The Redemption of Physical Reality. Princeton New Jersey: Princeton University Press.
Wall J. (1998) Marks of Indifference: Aspects of Photography in, or as, Conceptual Art. In Ed. Janus, E. Veronica’s Revenge: Contemporary Perspectives on Photography. Zurich: Scalo.
Theatre
Theatre is a collaborative form of fine art that uses live performers to present the experience of a real or imagined event before a live audience in a specific place. The performers may communicate this experience to the audience through combinations of gesture, speech, song, music or dance...
lit. Throughout the duration of the display, the people shown do not speak or move. The approach thus marries the art forms of the stage with those of painting/photography, and as such it has been of interest to modern photographers. The most recent hey-day of the tableau vivant was the 19th century with virtually nude tableaux vivants or "poses plastiques" providing a form of erotic entertainment.
Occasionally, a Mass
Mass (liturgy)
"Mass" is one of the names by which the sacrament of the Eucharist is called in the Roman Catholic Church: others are "Eucharist", the "Lord's Supper", the "Breaking of Bread", the "Eucharistic assembly ", the "memorial of the Lord's Passion and Resurrection", the "Holy Sacrifice", the "Holy and...
was punctuated by short dramatic scenes and tableaux. They were a major feature of festivities for royal weddings, coronations and Royal entries into cities. Often the actors imitated statues, much in the way of modern street entertainers, but in larger groups, and mounted on elaborate temporary stands along the path of the main procession.
On a stage
Before radioRadio
Radio is the transmission of signals through free space by modulation of electromagnetic waves with frequencies below those of visible light. Electromagnetic radiation travels by means of oscillating electromagnetic fields that pass through the air and the vacuum of space...
, film
Film
A film, also called a movie or motion picture, is a series of still or moving images. It is produced by recording photographic images with cameras, or by creating images using animation techniques or visual effects...
and television
Television
Television is a telecommunication medium for transmitting and receiving moving images that can be monochrome or colored, with accompanying sound...
, tableaux vivants were popular forms of entertainment. Before the age of colour reproduction of images the tableau vivant (often abbreviated simply to tableau) was sometimes used to recreate paintings "on stage", based on an etching or sketch of the painting. This could be done as an amateur venture in a drawing room
Drawing room
A drawing room is a room in a house where visitors may be entertained. The name is derived from the sixteenth-century terms "withdrawing room" and "withdrawing chamber", which remained in use through the seventeenth century, and made its first written appearance in 1642...
, or as a more professionally produced series of tableaux presented on a theatre stage, one following another, usually to tell a story without requiring all the usual trappings of a "live" theatre performance. They thus 'educated' their audience to understand the form taken by later Victorian
Victorian era
The Victorian era of British history was the period of Queen Victoria's reign from 20 June 1837 until her death on 22 January 1901. It was a long period of peace, prosperity, refined sensibilities and national self-confidence...
and Edwardian era magic lantern
Magic lantern
The magic lantern or Laterna Magica is an early type of image projector developed in the 17th century.-Operation:The magic lantern has a concave mirror in front of a light source that gathers light and projects it through a slide with an image scanned onto it. The light rays cross an aperture , and...
shows, and perhaps also sequential narrative comic strip
Comic strip
A comic strip is a sequence of drawings arranged in interrelated panels to display brief humor or form a narrative, often serialized, with text in balloons and captions....
s (which first appeared in modern form in the late 1890s).
Since English stage censorship
Censorship
thumb|[[Book burning]] following the [[1973 Chilean coup d'état|1973 coup]] that installed the [[Military government of Chile |Pinochet regime]] in Chile...
often strictly forbade actresses to move when nude or semi-nude
Toplessness
Toplessness is the state in which a female's breasts are uncovered, with the areolae and nipples visible, usually in a public space. It can also refer to a female not wearing any clothing above the waist, which is the female equivalent to a male barechestedness.The history and even the present-day...
on stage, tableaux vivants also had a place in presenting risqué entertainment at special shows. In the nineteenth century they 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
Great Windmill Street is a thoroughfare running north-south in Soho, London, England. It is dissected by Shaftesbury Avenue. The street took its name from the windmill on the site which was first recorded 1585 and was demolished during the 1690s...
, London. Other notorious venues were the Coal Hole in the Strand
Strand, London
Strand is a street in the City of Westminster, London, England. The street is just over three-quarters of a mile long. It currently starts at Trafalgar Square and runs east to join Fleet Street at Temple Bar, which marks the boundary of the City of London at this point, though its historical length...
and The Cyder Cellar in Maiden Lane
Maiden Lane
Maiden Lane may refer to:* Maiden Lane , a street in Covent Garden, London* Maiden Lane , a street in Manhattan* Maiden Lane , a street in San Francisco...
. In the twentieth century London the Windmill Theatre
Windmill Theatre
The Windmill Theatre, later The Windmill International, was a variety and revue theatre in Great Windmill Street, London. The theatre was famous for its nude tableaux vivants...
(1932–64) provided erotic entertainment in the form of nude tableaux vivants on stage. Such entertainment was also to be seen at fairground sideshows (e.g.: seen in the film A Taste of Honey
A Taste of Honey (film)
A Taste of Honey is a 1961 British film adaptation of the play of the same name by Shelagh Delaney. Delaney adapted the screenplay herself, aided by director Tony Richardson, who had previously directed the first production of the play...
). Such shows had largely died out by the 1970s.
These "tableaux vivants" were often performed as the basis for school nativity plays in England during the Victorian period. Today, the custom is now only practised in a single English school - Loughborough High School (the oldest all-girl school in England, founded in 1850). Ten tableaux are performed each year at the school carol service: including the depiction of an all-grey engraving (in which the subjects are painted completely grey).
In the early years of the 20th century the German dancer Olga Desmond
Olga Desmond
Olga Desmond was a German dancer and actress.-Biography:...
caused scandals with her “Evenings of Beauty” (Schönheitsabende) in which she posed nude in "living pictures", imitating classical works of art.
A tableaux vivant-style production called the Pageant of the Masters
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 vivant or "living pictures" in which classical and contemporary works of art are recreated by real people who are made to look nearly identical to the...
has been held in Laguna Beach, California
Laguna Beach, California
Laguna Beach is a seaside resort city and artist community located in southern Orange County, California, United States, approximately southwest of the county seat of Santa Ana...
every summer since 1933 (with the exception of four years during World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
). It involves hundreds of volunteers drawn from the surrounding area and attracts over a hundred thousand visitors annually. The festival recreates famous works of art on the stage. It has a different theme each year, but always features a recreation of Leonardo Da Vinci
Leonardo da Vinci
Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci was an Italian Renaissance polymath: painter, sculptor, architect, musician, scientist, mathematician, engineer, inventor, anatomist, geologist, cartographer, botanist and writer whose genius, perhaps more than that of any other figure, epitomized the Renaissance...
's "The Last Supper." The only time Da Vinci's "Last Supper" did not appear was when the festival's theme was Salvador Dali
Salvador Dalí
Salvador Domènec Felip Jacint Dalí i Domènech, Marquis de Púbol , commonly known as Salvador Dalí , was a prominent Spanish Catalan surrealist painter born in Figueres,Spain....
, in which case Dali's "Last Supper" filled the void.
Yet another tableaux vivant-style production called the Pageant of our Lord
Pageant of Our Lord
The Pageant of Our Lord is a living arts pageant produced by Rolling Hills Covenant Church in Rolling Hills Estates, California. The pageant, started in 1986, presents the life of Christ through living art accompanied with narration, a 60-voice choir, and a full orchestra every year for 17...
has been held in Rolling Hills Estates, California
Rolling Hills Estates, California
Rolling Hills Estates is a city in Los Angeles County, California, United States. The population was 8,067 at the 2010 census, up from 7,676 at the 2000 census....
every spring since 1985. This production differs only in that its focus is exclusively on the life of Jesus Christ as told through religious works of art. Like the Pageant of the Masters, this production relies on hundreds of volunteers from the surrounding area and has attracted over two-hundred thousand people. It has featured art pieces such as Michelangelo Bounarroti's Pieta, Claus Sleuter's The Well of Moses, De L' Esprie's Coming Home, and many others.
The Photographic Tableau Form
Jean-Francois ChevrierJean-François Chevrier
Jean-François Chevrier is an art historian, art critic and exhibition curator. He lives and works in Paris. He is Professor in the History of Contemporary Art at the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris....
was the first to coin the term Tableau in relation to a form of art photography, which began in the 1970s and 80s in an essay titled The Adventures of the Picture Form in the History of Photography in 1989. It must be noted that the initial translation of this text substitutes the French word 'Tableau' for the English word 'Picture.' However Michael Fried retains the French word of 'Tableau' when referring to Chevrier's essay, because according to Fried (2008), there is no direct translation into English for the French word Tableau. Picture is similar, however “…it lacks the connotations of constructedness, of being the product of an intellectual act that the French word carries.”
Other key texts are Chevrier‘s (2006) The Tableau and The Document of Experience. In Ed. Weski, T. Click Double Click: The Documentary Factor. And Jeff Wall’s (1998) Marks of Indifference: Aspects of Photography in, or as, Conceptual Art. In Ed. Janus, E. Veronica’s Revenge: Contemporary Perspectives on Photography. Clement Greenberg’s
Clement Greenberg
Clement Greenberg was an American essayist known mainly as an influential visual art critic closely associated with American Modern art of the mid-20th century...
theory of Medium Specificity is also important to its understanding.
The key characteristics of the contemporary photographic tableau according to Jean-Francois Chevrier
Jean-François Chevrier
Jean-François Chevrier is an art historian, art critic and exhibition curator. He lives and works in Paris. He is Professor in the History of Contemporary Art at the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris....
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."
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 you from the object. It
makes you stand back from the picture to take it all in. This confrontational experience, Fried (2008) 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 tableau has its roots in pictorialist photography (see Alfred Stieglitz
Alfred Stieglitz
Alfred Stieglitz was an American photographer and modern art promoter who was instrumental over his fifty-year career in making photography an accepted art form...
) and not the Tableau Vivant. Pictorialism, according to Jeff Wall
Jeff Wall
Jeffrey "Jeff" Wall, OC, RSA is a Canadian artist best known for his large-scale back-lit cibachrome photographs and art-historical writing. Wall has been a key figure in Vancouver's art scene since the early-1970s...
(1998) could be seen as an attempt by photographers to unsuccessfully imitate painting:
"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."
Pictorialism failed according to Jeff Wall
Jeff Wall
Jeffrey "Jeff" Wall, OC, RSA is a Canadian artist best known for his large-scale back-lit cibachrome photographs and art-historical writing. Wall has been a key figure in Vancouver's art scene since the early-1970s...
because photographers lacked the means to make their surfaces unpredictable. However Photography did have the ability to become unpredictable and spontaneous. This was achieved by making photographs, related to the inherent capabilities of the camera itself. And this Jeff Wall
Jeff Wall
Jeffrey "Jeff" Wall, OC, RSA is a Canadian artist best known for his large-scale back-lit cibachrome photographs and art-historical writing. Wall has been a key figure in Vancouver's art scene since the early-1970s...
(1998) argues was a direct result of photo-journalism and the media/culture 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."
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 or pictorialist photography and the spontaneous snapshot. This is the stage whereby Jeff Wall (1998) argues that photography enters a 'modernist dialectic.' Wall claims that unpredictability is key to modern aesthetics. This new concept of the picture, which Jeff 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
Luc Delahaye 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 however countered by dramatic intensity and a narrative...
, Andreas Gursky
Andreas Gursky
Andreas Gursky is a German visual artist known for his enormous architecture and landscape color photographs, often employing a high point of view...
, Thomas Struth
Thomas Struth
Thomas Struth is a German photographer whose wide-ranging work includes depictions of detailed cityscapes, Asian jungles and family portraits. He is one of Germany's most widely exhibited and collected fine art photographers...
and Philip Lorca-Dicorcia.
The Tableau as a form still dominates the Art Photography market. As Michael Fried in 2008, notes:
"Arguably the most decisive development in the rise of the new art photography has been the emergence, starting in the late 1970’s and gaining impetus in the 1980’s and after, of what the French critic Jean-Francois Chevrier has called "The Tableau Form."
However their appears to be only a handful of young, emerging artists working within the Tableau form. Good examples include Florian Maier Aichen, Maxim Kelly, Matthew Porter and Peter Funch.
For a piece of art to qualify as tableau it must be produced for the gallery wall (large print), must be pictorial (beautifully composed) and must take into consideration the intrinsic qualities of the camera (chance). Digital manipulation is often a prominent technique used in the creation of work within the Tableau Form, since photography is often said to lack human agency and one of the salient qualities of the Tableau is that it must be an object of thought.
Suggested Reading:
Chevrier, J. (1989) The Adventures of the Picture Form in the History of Photography. In Ed. Fogle, D. (2003) The Last Picture Show: Artists Using Photography 1960-1982. Minneapolis: Walker Art Centre.
Chevrier, J. (2006) The Tableau and The Document of Experience. In Ed. Weski, T. Click Double Click: The Documentary Factor. Munich: Haus Der Kunst and Brussels: Centre for Fine Art.
Fried, M. (2008) Why Photography Matters as Art as Never Before. New Haven/London: Yale University Press.
Greenberg, C. (1965) Modernist Painting in. Harrison, C. Wood, P. ed. (2003) Art in Theory 1900-2000. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.
Kracauer, S. (1960) Theory of film: The Redemption of Physical Reality. Princeton New Jersey: Princeton University Press.
Wall J. (1998) Marks of Indifference: Aspects of Photography in, or as, Conceptual Art. In Ed. Janus, E. Veronica’s Revenge: Contemporary Perspectives on Photography. Zurich: Scalo.
In film and television
- On the episode "Garden Party" of The OfficeThe OfficeThe Office is a popular mockumentary/situation comedy TV show that was first made in the UK and has now been re-made in many other countries, with overall viewership in the hundreds of millions worldwide. The original version of The Office was created by Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant. It...
Dwight SchruteDwight SchruteDwight Kurt Schrute III is a character on NBC's The Office portrayed by Rainn Wilson. He originally exactly resembled Gareth Keenan from the original UK version of The Office. Dwight is the top salesman and former acting manager for the Dunder Mifflin Paper Company and has won numerous awards for...
and a group of servers created a tableaux of the Last Supper to entertain a crowd.
- D.W. Griffith used tableaux to emphasize dramatic moments in A Corner in WheatA Corner in WheatA Corner in Wheat is a 1909 American short film which tells of a greedy tycoon who tries to corner the world market on wheat, destroying the lives of the people who can no longer afford to buy bread. It was directed by D. W. Griffith and adapted by Griffith and Frank E...
. Derek JarmanDerek JarmanMichael Derek Elworthy Jarman was an English film director, stage designer, diarist, artist, gardener and author.-Life:...
used the technique for some of his art films, as did Peter GreenawayPeter GreenawayPeter Greenaway, CBE is a British film director. His films are noted for the distinct influence of Renaissance and Baroque painting, and Flemish painting in particular...
.
- Jean-Luc GodardJean-Luc GodardJean-Luc Godard is a French-Swiss film director, screenwriter and film critic. He is often identified with the 1960s French film movement, French Nouvelle Vague, or "New Wave"....
, in collaboration with Jean-Pierre GorinJean-Pierre GorinJean-Pierre Gorin is a French filmmaker and professor, best known for his work with Nouvelle Vague luminary Jean-Luc Godard during what is often referred to as Godard's "radical" period....
, used in 1972 the tableau setting for the entire factory scene in Tout va bienTout va bienTout va bien is a 1972 film directed by Jean-Luc Godard and collaborator Jean-Pierre Gorin and starring Jane Fonda and Yves Montand.-Overview:...
. Nonetheless, his 1982 PassionPassion (1982 film)Passion is a 1982 film by Jean-Luc Godard, and the second feature film made during his return to relatively mainstream filmmaking in the 1980s, sometimes referred to as the Second Wave...
features perhaps some of the most beautiful tableaux vivants present in cinema, and constitutes in itself a masterpiece that explores the very nature of cinema.
- In Gus Van Sant's 1991 film My Own Private IdahoMy Own Private IdahoMy Own Private Idaho is a 1991 independent drama film written and directed by Gus Van Sant, loosely based on Shakespeare's Henry IV, Part 1, Henry IV, Part 2, and Henry V, and starring River Phoenix and Keanu Reeves...
, sex scenes are constructed as a series of tableaux vivants.
- Bela Tarr's film SatantangoSatantangoSátántangó is a film directed by Hungarian filmmaker Béla Tarr. Shot in black-and-white, completed in 1994, it runs 7 hours and 12 minutes. It is based on the novel Sátántangó by Hungarian novelist László Krasznahorkai, who has been providing Tarr with stories since his 1988 film Kárhozat...
has many very long tableaux vivant shots.
- In La ricottaLa ricottaLa ricotta is a short film written and directed by Pier Paolo Pasolini in 1962 and is part of the omnibus film RoGoPaG...
, a film by Pier Paolo PasoliniPier Paolo PasoliniPier Paolo Pasolini was an Italian film director, poet, writer, and intellectual. Pasolini distinguished himself as a poet, journalist, philosopher, linguist, novelist, playwright, filmmaker, newspaper and magazine columnist, actor, painter and political figure...
, there are the Deposizione di Cristo by Rosso FiorentinoRosso FiorentinoGiovanni Battista di Jacopo , known as Rosso Fiorentino , or Il Rosso, was an Italian Mannerist painter, in oil and fresco, belonging to the Florentine school.-Biography:...
and La Deposizione o Trasporto di Cristo by PontormoPontormoJacopo Carucci , 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 stylistic shift from the calm perspectival regularity that characterized the art of the Florentine...
.
- The final scene in Michael HanekeMichael HanekeMichael Haneke is a German born Austrian filmmaker and writer best known for his bleak and disturbing style. His films often document problems and failures in modern society. Haneke has worked in television‚ theatre and cinema. He is also known for raising social issues in his work...
's 2005 film Hidden is an extended tableau vivant.
See also
- Living statueLiving statueThe term living statue refers to a mime artist who poses like a statue or mannequin, usually with realistic statue-like makeup, sometimes for hours at a time....
- Agalmatophilia
- Windmill TheatreWindmill TheatreThe Windmill Theatre, later The Windmill International, was a variety and revue theatre in Great Windmill Street, London. The theatre was famous for its nude tableaux vivants...
- Eve SussmanEve SussmanEve Sussman is a British-born American artist. She was educated at Robert College of Istanbul, University of Canterbury and Bennington College. She resides in Brooklyn, New York, where her company, the Rufus Corporation is based; however, she continuously visits cultural centers around the world,...
- The Rape of the Sabine Women (film)The Rape of the Sabine Women (film)The Rape of the Sabine Women is an art film by Eve Sussman, which had its world premiere on 2006-11-26 at the 47th International Thessaloniki Film Festival....
External links
(1860 text describing how to produce Tableaux Vivants)- Kate Matthews Collection (Photograph collection includes 83 examples of tableaux vivants)