A Bluestocking Knits

We went to see the Pageant of the Masters in Laguna Beach last night — I had in fact never been.  If you've never heard of it, it is an annual production of tableaux vivants, recreating works of art through elaborate sets and costumes.  The theme this year is "Genius", exploring, as the website puts it, "the fascinating and unpredictable relationship between art and technology with a cavalcade of masterpieces illustrating how breakthroughs in different fields have also altered the path of art history and the way we see the world".  "!"

Genius?  There is certainly a surreal meticulousness about the whole thing, and I must say it was fascinating to appreciate the illusion.  I enjoyed it very much, though I almost wish we'd forked out for the $100+ seats (almost), as viewing it through binoculars from the middle of the side seats, which those glasses-wearing members of our family had to do, was certainly not as remarkable as the full effect, I'm sure.
"Gallery of the Louvre" (detail)

and the real thing, the painting by Samuel F.B. Morse.

Seurat's "Le Cirque", with another angle so that you can see how it's done.  Many of the performers are actually poking the upper parts of their bodies through the painted set.

Manet's "Music in the Tuileries Gardens".

I was almost more intrigued by the illusion than by the end result, and found myself this morning collecting those photographs that show the slight tweaking of the illusion by the less-than-straight-on angle.  (The links under each are to the source of the photograph, all newspaper press releases since there is "no photography allowed" during the performance".  I chose large images so that you can click on them to see much more detail, though there are lots of other interesting professional-photographer images out there.)

Beda's c.1880 "The Chess Game", from the 2007 Pageant.

Don't know this picture, apparently from the year they did fairy tales …

"Moon Viewing over Sarashina Rice Fields" (1891) by Yoshu Chikanobu, real and tableau.