mannequin-man
the living mannequin /
Human statue

Mannequin

Definition

1. A life-size full or partial representation of the human body, used for the fitting or displaying of clothes; a dummy.
2. A jointed model of the human body used by artists, especially to demonstrate the arrangement of drapery. Also called lay figure.
3. One who models clothes; a model.

[French from Old French little man, figurine, from Middle Dutch mannekijn; also see manikin.]

Word History: Department store mannequins are not always male and little, yet mannequin goes back to the Middle Dutch word mannekijn, the diminutive form of man. In Dutch man, as in English, has often been used to mean “person.” As for the size of a mannequin, the Middle Dutch word may mean “dwarf” but in Modern Dutch developed the specialized sense of “an artist's jointed model.” This was the sense in which we adopted the word (first recorded in 1570).
The word borrowed from Dutch now has the form manikin. We later adopted the French version of the Dutch word as well, giving English mannequin. Mannequin is considered to be first recorded in a dictionary published from 1730 to 1736 or in 1902. Mannequin is now the form most commonly encountered and the one commonly used for a department store dummy as well as a live model.

Living Statue

Definiton

The term living statue is often used to refer to a type of mime artist who poses like a statue or mannequin, usually with realistic statue-like makeup, sometimes for hours at a time. This is an art that requires a great deal of patience and physical stamina.

Living statue performers have been known to pose as shop window mannequins in order to fool passers by, and a number of hidden camera shows on television have had living statues suddenly spring to life to startle people. As with all performing arts, living statue performers may perform as street performers (buskers) or in commissioned shows.

There is an annual competition for such performers at Arnhem in the Netherlands. Also, the U.S. city of Laguna Beach, California, is home to the annual Pageant of the Masters show which is created by local amateur volunteers as part of the city's Festival of the Arts. The show presents living statue recreations of several dozen famous artworks in one evening. The show is set to classical music and about two minutes are allocated per artwork.

Tableau (or Tableau Vivant plural: Tableaux Vivants)

Definition

French for "living picture". The term describes a striking group of suitably costumed artist's models, carefully posed and often theatrically lit. Throughout the duration of the display, the people shown do not speak or move. The approach thus marries the art forms of the stage with those of painting/photography, and as such it has been of interest to modern photographers.

Before radio, film and television, tableaux vivants were popular forms of entertainment. Before the age of colour reproduction of images the tableau vivant (often abbreviated simply to tableau) was sometimes used to recreate paintings "on stage", based on an etching or sketch of the painting. This could be done as an amateur venture in a drawing room, or as a more professionally produced series of tableaux presented on a theatre stage, one following another, usually to tell a story without requiring all the usual trappings of a "live" theatre performance. They thus 'educated' their audience to understand the form taken by later Victorian and Edwardian era magic lantern shows, and perhaps also sequential narrative comic strips.

Since stage censorship often strictly forbade actresses to move when nude or semi-nude on stage, tableaux vivants also had a place in presenting erotic entertainment at private clubs (e.g.: the Windmill Theatre) and fairground sideshows. This was superseded by colour pornographic magazines from around the mid 1950s.