Living statues

I captured a photo of street buskers performing living statues on the Rua Augusta in Lisbon, Portugal. I used the Rule of thirds as a compositon guide. Little info: A living statue, also known as a human statue, usually refers to a performer who poses as a statue or mannequin, usually with realistic statue-like makeup.

Living statue may also refer to art installations created by an artist using living people, or other works created by a performing artist.

History
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"). 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.
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