Painting with People

Jul 28, 2008 at 8:59 AM
3 comments

Or, as it's known to real artists I suppose, Tableau Vivant.

I recently posted my second of these on AkuAku:

I also describe my plans to create a set of cards that facilitates creating more of these famous painting recreations, with a suitable painting available for any number of people I happen to have on hand. Finding the appropriate images isn't easy though.

I flipped through a large art history tome and had problems coming up with others for the list though. So many paintings that the average person would consider famous aren't appropriate either because they are landscapes, or too abstract or too simple and/or require a difficult specific background/props to be instantly recognizable (like the Mona Lisa). They need to be realistic portraits of a small set of people with unique positioning. I'm thinking if I try really hard I can come up with maybe a couple dozen of these. Jeremy thinks he can find 100. So far the only other one I've found is Botticelli's The Birth of Venus (N=4). I'm looking forward to seeing Jeremy's list, I could really use some help! Feel free to make suggestions in the comments.

I'm cross-posting this here to try to get more suggestions. Any ideas?

I'd love to do Borscht's The Garden of Earthly Delights at Burning Man some day. It would require a lot of preparation in terms of props, structures and people organization, but sure would make a nice project.