1857Jean-Francois Millet paints Blue Man Group while they use a fun-nelator slingshot to cast paint bal-loons against an abandoned barn. !e Blue Men come out disap-pointingly small on canvas and not properly centered. Millet remedies the situation by adding peasants to the foreground, thereby balanc-ing the composition. No one had ever painted peasants in the “grand style” before this piece, which he calls !e Gleaners. !e painting causes a scandal and Millet cata-lyzes a revolution in artistic subject

matter.

1900!roughout the "rst two decades of the twentieth century, Blue Man Group de-velops new material at places like Dixon Place, Performance Space 122 and on the Vaudeville circuit. !ey appear several times on the same bill as the young Marx Brothers. One of Blue Man Group’s piec-es, called “Shadows,” is the inspiration for the classic mirror scene in the Marx

Brothers’ "lm Duck Soup.

1960When Yves Klein gives Blue Man Group a tour of his studio, one of the Blue Men accidently brushes against a blank can-vas leaving behind a blue smudge. Klein writes: “When I saw the Blue Man’s smudge on my canvas I thought - at last, the life force transmitted directly to a painting, unmediated by the artist’s hand!” Klein explores this idea further, leading to his infamous Anthropometry series, where he paints his subjects and then presses or drags them against large

white canvases.

1990In the 90s, the story of Blue Man Group’s in#uence on modern art is being told for the "rst time. Many of the pieces men-tioned here are on display in the lobby gallery of the Briar Street !eatre in Chi-

cago.