Sunday in the Park

Sunday in the Park with George

Always a dangerous thing for me to think...but I was thinking about tableau vivants this morning for some reason. I wrote about them here a while back and then revisited the subject in my mind this morning.  They go both aways.  Let me explain.

A tableau vivant is a "living picture" where humans and the like substitute for the drawn characters.  But that can be the reverse as well - where a scene with humans and animals for instance can then be "captured" by photo or painting or simply in your mind's eye.  I think that is where this odd little thought sequence ended up.  Remember this painting by Seurat? (It was in Ferris Buellar just in case you can't place it). It is of a Sunday afternoon in the park type of thing.

There was a musical titled "Sunday Afternoon in the Park with George" in the middle 1980s (Sondheim) and the show either opened or closed with a "freeze" of this painting or close thereof backlit behind a scrim and it was a perfect effect.  No program notes explaining time and place and mood were needed. Everything was perfectly alive though frozen like a painting.