“Part theater, part performance, part "pure” painting taken to its (il)logical extreme, The Living Paintings plays with the interstices between reality and illusion, dramatically underscoring the fact that both are variable constructs… . This is a case where the artists, themselves admittedly curious to find out what it feels like to be a work of art, are able to garner an immediate response from the viewers, and even contest it.“
-Marcia Tucker, exhibition brochure.

“This was the first installation in the United States by the British Artist Stephen Taylor Woodrow. The Living Paintings consisted of three men, entirely painted and altogether silent, hanging inside picture frames high up on the walls of the Museum’s main exhibition gallery. They remained there for the duration of the Museum’s public viewing hours. Part theater, part performance, and part painting, this contemporary tableau vivant played with the vague and ambiguous interrelationships of reality and illusion.”
-From The New Museum Annual report, 1988

Organized by Marcia Tucker; coordinated by Karen Fiss