Editing Living statue (section)

== History ==
[[File:Tableau vivant by Olga Desmond. 01.jpg|thumb|[[Olga Desmond]] nude with [[drapery]] and [[pedestal]]]]
The [[tableau vivant]], or group of living statues, was a regular feature of medieval and [[Renaissance]] festivities and pageantry, such as [[royal entries]] by rulers into cities. Typically a group enacting a scene would be mounted on an elaborate stand decorated to look like a monument, placed on the route of the procession.

By a quirk of English law, nudity on the stage was not permitted unless the performers remained motionless while the stage curtains were open. In the early years of the 20th century, performers took advantage of this exception to stage "plastic representations", as they were sometimes called, centring on nudity.  The most persistent performer in this line was the German dancer [[Olga Desmond]], who later put on "Evenings of Beauty" (''Schönheitsabende'') in Germany, in which she posed nude in imitation of classical works of art ("living pictures").<ref>{{cite web|url= https://www.dasverborgenemuseum.de/kuenstlerinnen/desmond-olga| title=Desmond, Olga 1890–1964|website=Das Verborgene Museum|accessdate=12 June 2022}}</ref>  The English tradition continued until the English law was changed in the 1960s. 

A living statue appeared in a scene of the 1945 French film ''Les enfants du paradis'' (''[[Children of Paradise]]''). The [[London]]-based artists [[Gilbert and George]] created living statues in the 1960s.