settings
1984 vocabulary
3 art terms
help & settings
[x]
-
tableau vivant
-
tags: [art]
► definition
Definition:A representation of some scene by means of persons grouped in the proper manner, placed in appropriate postures, and remaining silent and motionless.Noah Webster. Webster's Unabridged Dictionary (1913)
image: By Neither photographer nor publisher is identified on the postcard - old Russian postcard, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3170648
► uses
Uses:
often writtten simply tableau
---
[She] stopped in the doorway, her arms laden with tablets, and moved her colorless lips for a moment before she spoke, as if she were formulating an address. [...]
“Hurry up! We don’t have time to stage a tableau-vivant here before the house.”
John Kennedy Toole. A Confederacy of Dunces (1980)
---
The roar of guns, that had not ceased for ten hours, wearied the ear and gave a peculiar significance to the spectacle, as music does to tableaux vivants.
Leo Tolstoy. War and Peace: 10 (Book Ten) . Simon & Schuster
---
It was a museum used for propaganda displays of various kinds—scale models of rocket bombs and Floating Fortresses, wax-work tableaux illustrating enemy atrocities, and the like.
George Orwell. 1984 (1949)
---
He stopped for but a short time in front of her, but even his momentary attitudes were sufficient to compose a complete tableau vivant, and, as it were, an historical scene.
Marcel Proust. In Search of Lost Time [volume 4]
---
They stood around the bed in tableau as the sun came up.
Stephen King. The Stand (1990)
help with search