Tableaux Vivants and Living Sculptures

In Chapter 2 on artist biopics, it was noted that the conversion of a painting into a staged scene is a recurring topic in this genre. Instead of showing us Rembrandt's actual paintings, for instance, Korda, in his biopic on the Dutch painter, presents us with scenes based on them. Similarly, Jarman's film on Caravaggio comprises several scenes set in the artist's studio, which show us models posing for a Caravaggio composition like a tableau of waxworks at Madame Tussaud's. Three-dimensional scenes, which are based on two-dimensional pictorial compositions, are thus created in the film studio. These two-dimensional compositions, in turn, were based on three-dimensional forms and bodies once arranged in the artist's studio.

This uncanny inversion of the artistic process is reminiscent of tableaux vivants or Lebende Bilder — the theatrically lit compositions, often based on famous artworks or literary passages, of living human bodies that do not move throughout the duration of the display. Although the practice of the tableau vivant reaches back to medieval pageants and open-air festivities during the Renaissance, it became particularly popular in the second half of the eighteenth century, when leading intellectuals such as Diderot and Goethe dealt with some of its manifestations. In his writings on the theatre of the 1750s and 1760s, for instance, Diderot advocated a new kind of dramaturgy that dismissed the coup de théâtre, the sudden turn of the plot. Instead, in order to create emotional and moral effect, stage productions should orient themselves towards the best painting of the day to find inspiration for the inclusion of deliberate tableaux at crucial moments in the drama.