Theatre Practice

Throughout the Middle Ages and across a staggering variety of sources, both the notion of smell and the olfactory sense responsible for smells’ discernment have been put through an exegetical, doctrinal, and mystical wringer by scores of philosophers, physicians, and theologians.  Ephemeral and fleeting but emotionally, spiritually, and physiologically potent, olfaction was deeply embedded in humoral, anatomical, and cognitive theories. Odors could heal and odors could harm; they could purify and they could taint. Scent and Sense explores those images and objects that take smells as their predicates, directing the inquiry on their tropological and often paradoxical meanings, and on their place in the medieval economy of remembrance and reflection. Essays draw from several religious cultures of the global medieval world—Buddhist, Jewish, Christian (both western and eastern), Islamic—and offer a broad temporal span of several centuries. Authors engage with visual production of different kinds: from objects that emit smell to the representation of such objects, from monumental architectural structures and liturgical furnishings to illuminated miniatures in codices and paintings from palm-leaf manuscripts. All share an interest in the theoretical and metaphorical underpinnings of the olfactory sense, but all are thoroughly anchored in the material universe of the medieval cultural eco-system. Scent and Sense, thus, takes a holistic approach to its subject, crossing religions, territories, and media of the medieval world writ large; its inquiry, nevertheless, is tightly focused on the multivalent relationships between olfaction, material culture, and remembrance that manifest themselves along an extraordinarily varied spectrum of thought. Rooted equally in ritual and knowledge, metaphysically potent yet making a claim for absolute truth, the sensorial ephemera studied in this volume exist on the brink, infused with fraught self-contradictions, tethered to the divine but—like any memory—inherently untrustworthy.

To begin with, a few words on my background. I am a researcher at a Swedish theatre school, Malmö Theatre academy, Lund University, where I have also long been active as a teacher. The school offers a three-year program for acting, among other programs. After their graduation our acting students find their ways into theatre institutions around the country, experimental theatres, performance collectives, as well as into film and television. They become confronted with the extremely variegated and complex challenges offered to actors by theatre and media today. In theatre literature acting methodology is often described as a struggle of approaches, or schools, or styles. Experience from my acting academy does not support this view. Rather, handled with competence and consideration, different traditions in acting can complement each other by highlighting and developing different aspects of the actor's art, and habitual focus on differences easily conceals important similarities. 1 In this talk, I am going to address an element that is present in many forms of acting, the element of subjunctivity, i.e. when the actor, implicitly or explicitly, applies a working mode regulated by questions like "what if I were in the role's situation?". Participatory sense-making I am going to discuss this in relation to an enactive theory about interaction, that of "participatory sense-making", which has been developed by Hanne De Jaegher and Ezequiel di Paolo, philosopher and cognitive scientist, University of the Basque Country, and Professor at the Basque Foundation for Science, respectively. In this theory they set out to explain processes of meaning making in social interaction. Acting builds on similar mechanisms for meaning making as we find in social life. Not only does the interpretation of a role reflect

Despite the intense critical interest in the body, we remain firmly within the aesthetics that we have inherited from the nineteenth century in which only two senses, visión and hearing, are considered. In an attempt to redress the neglect of the sense of smell in criticism, the article examines the olfactory landscapes in Toni Morrison's Sula (1973), Jamaica Kincaid's The Autobiography of My Mother (1996), and Jeanette Winterson's Written on the Body (1992), to show how these novéis offer highly intriguing configurations of smell, gender, and ethnicity. The analyses reveal that the three novéis engage in re-coding of the conventional olfactory landscapes: foul smells, constructed throughout the Enlightenment as the sense of unreason, madness, savagery, and animality, are reconstructed by the three writers as the sense of love and relationship, while fragrant scents become markers of falsehood and death. Morrison, Kincaid, and Winterson capitalize on the conventional gendering of smell as a female (not to say feminine) sense and expose the conventionality of representing women in terms of "nice" smells both by explicit references to the scents' sexual powers and by making "unpleasant" odors carry the same power of sexual attraction as scents. Finally, the article proposes that smell may offer a distinct epistemological alternative to sight and hearing.

• pedrogiordano83/at/yahoo.com.ar > Context • From an operative constructivist perspective, Luhmann unfolds the guidelines of his theory of cognition. Focusing on how the scientific system reflects, he observes the conditions under which the selective and recursive network of communications, specialized in determining the veracity or falsehood of knowledge, develops in modern society. > Problem • This perspective stimulates several debates that link ontological and epistemological considerations. In order to contribute to these, this article advances the specification of operative constructivism, analyzing the influence exerted on it by an old discussion partner: the analytical realism of Parsons. > Method • This is a theoretical-conceptual work that first addresses the ontological and epistemological approaches underlying the thinking of Parsons and Luhmann, and then contrasts their respective ways of conceptualizing systems, complexity and cybernetics. > Results • Parsons's work is underlined as a precursor of the introduction into sociology of the theories of systems, complexity and cybernetics, a suggestion that finds in Luhmann a follower, who deepens the incorporation of these contributions, but on the basis of conceptualizations of a later generation. At the same time, when the emphasis is placed on the analytical moment of analytical realism, in addition to highlighting another of Parsons's anticipation of operative constructivism, he is appraised as an antecedent of constructivist perspectives on knowledge. > Implications • By virtue of its comparison with analytical realism, the characterization of operative constructivism attends to the main debates it has generated: at the ontological level, it explores the scope of the principle of de-ontologization; epistemologically, it deals with the realism/constructivism tension. In specifying this position, its ambivalences with regard to the radical constructivism of Maturana and von Glasersfeld are also pointed out.

Quel est encore le rôle des acteurs vis-à-vis de leur métier, dans une société en quête de sens, où l’art dramatique représenterait presque une sorte d’énigme contemporaine : à la fois art vivant et institution en crise ?
Le théâtre comme miroir de l’humanité, oscille ici entre idéal artistique et fragmentations conceptuelles. Il est examiné dans cet ouvrage à travers les mirages qui brouillent sa perception, pour y déceler les vecteurs essentiels d’une force vivante animant les pratiques artistiques, et redonnant sens à l’existence par la rencontre et le partage qui permettent à l’artiste et au spectateur de cheminer sur une voie poétique.
Entre tensions théoriques et pratiques, le théâtre appelle ainsi à un "être ensemble" qui réaffirme sa place comme moteur d’une expérience humaine partagée. Dans sa dimension collective et sensible, celui-ci incarne alors une quête d’unité et de réenchantement collectif.

Nāṭyaśāstra is an Indian ancient Sanskrit text on dramaturgy written by Āchārya Bhartmuni in the 5th century. The story of the origin, development, and evolution of Nāṭyaśāstra is described in the very first chapter of the text. It also reveals the emergence of theatre practice. According to Nāṭyaśāstra, theatre serves the purpose of entertaining as well as educating its audiences. This paper aims to examine the contemporary theatre practice on the principle of Nāṭyaśāstra in this context. The objective of the present research paper is to study the motivation, inspiration, and purpose of contemporary theatre practitioners under the light of the purpose of theatre according to Nāṭyaśāstra.
The present research is qualitative. The methodology employed for data collection is the interview of 46 theatre practitioners using semi-structured interviews. The data has been collected from prominent theatre festivals held in five different North Indian cities namely Delhi, Bhopal, Jaipur, Lucknow, and Patna. The analysis of the interviews is done using thematic analysis.
The findings of the research show that contemporary theatre practitioners have personal aspirations as well as social obligations to practising theatre. Contemporary theatre practitioners also believe that theatre is a medium of entertainment as well as sensitizing people which aligns with the principle of Nāṭyaśāstra.

This vision document is a result of 20 years of working with scent in museums of visual art and 5 years of evaluation. "In Search of Lost Scents" is a collaboration between Vrije Universiteit (Caro Verbeek), IFF (Bernardo Fleming) and Rijksmuseum (Pauline Kintz). It answers questions such as: which smells should I use to tell stories surrounding artefacts and paintings? how do I safely distribute smells? How can I integrate smells for inclusive purposes? How can I help visitors evaluate smells?

Systems Science, cybernetics and complexity are closely related fields. To illustrate, this article describes two projects in contemporary cybernetics that may be of interest to those concerned with complexity and policy studies. The first project is an effort to expand the conception of science so that it more successfully encompasses the social sciences. The intent is to aid communication among disciplines and improve our ability to manage social systems. The second project is an effort to develop reflexivity theory into a general theory of purposeful, self-directed systems, thus improving our understanding and management of social systems. The article ends with some comparisons of complexity and cybernetics.

In almost 60 articles this book reviews the current state of second-order cybernetics and investigates which new research methods second-order cybernetics can offer to tackle wicked problems in science and in society. The contributions explore its application to both scientific fields (such as mathematics, psychology, and consciousness research and non-scientific ones such as design theory and theater science. The book uses a pluralistic, multi-faceted approach to discuss these applications. Each main article is accompanied by several commentaries and author responses, which together allow the reader to discover further perspectives than in the original article alone. This procedure shows that second-order cybernetics is already on its way to becoming an idea shared by many researchers in a variety of disciplines.

Ma Solo 36? offers a complex, layered exploration into the depths of human existence, consciousness, and emotion. Through a melding of narrative styles that include theater, spoken word, and imagery, each piece delves into the multifaceted realms of human experience—ranging from internal dialogues and sea voyages to kaleidoscopic emotional landscapes. Canto Uno explores existential questions of identity and time, while Canto Due takes audiences on a surreal maritime journey grappling with existential dilemmas. Canto Tre is the missing canto, an opportunity for the audience to add its narrative to complete the meaning of the opera. Finally, Canto Quattro offers a poetic tapestry capturing the essence of modern-day existential anxieties and aspirations.

By blurring the boundaries between reality and imagination, self and other, past and future, each Canto defies traditional narrative structures and invites the audience for introspection, engagement, and significance. Whether facing the complexities of community and societal rules in Canto Uno, challenging the nature of reality in "Canto Due," or navigating emotional labyrinths in Canto Quattro, Ma Solo 36? serves as a profound meditation on human existence's fluid, elusive nature. Ma Solo 36? is the practical application of the TransPerformance aesthetic acting as a reflective surface seeking questions rather than offering answers and encouraging viewers to ponder their lives, choices, and places in the cosmos.

From biblical to current times, a large number of fragrances have been recorded in Jewish literature. This book is dedicated to a discussion of the halakhic domain of the "blessings on scents" that evolved in the time of the Sages, i.e., blessings recited for the pleasure caused by the scent of fragrances. Extensive current knowledge on the history of the fragrances, their identification, names in Jewish languages, usages, and place in Jewish life and folklore is presented here for the first time. More precisely, methods and approaches concerning the blessings proposed for the different types of fragrances, from the Talmudic Sages to contemporary adjudicators, are discussed. This study is interdisciplinary and it encompasses several fields of knowledge: botany, zoology, history, material culture and Rabbinic literature. The topic is explored in light of a variety of literary genres, Jewish literature (halakha, responsa, customsm and prayer books), external sources and ancient and modern scientific literature.
The main part of the book is devoted to a systematic review of some 70 species of fragrances. Prior to the industrial-chemical development, the large majority of aromatic substances came from the plant world and a minority from the animal world. Halakhic authorities in the East and West engaged in discussions about plants and the aromatic secretions of animals that lived in the wild or were raised for agricultural purposes in the close vicinity of the speakers, as well as about exotic fragrances that arrived in their countries through the trade routes, by sea and by land, from their regions of cultivation in South East Asia and the Arabian Peninsula.

The performance history of Middleton's Women Beware Women is peculiar, in both senses of the word. The play's relationship with the stage is strange because of the paucity of references to performances in the period for which it was written. The tragedy also has a very specific performance record which begs many questions, not least of which is: what is this play precisely about that appears to have rendered it unplayable for most of its existence. The sordid world of the play, with its intermixing of sexual and political power, may well be the reason why Women Beware Women has often suffered such neglect. It is relatively easy to envisage why the play should disappear from sight at the Restoration, despite that period's own fascination with erotic representation on stage: the difficulty lies in the nature of sexual relations as they are presented by Middleton. Rapid changes in modes of characterization and the spectacular finale may also have deterred theatre companies. The eighteenth century's neo-classical literary culture and veneration for polite society would also have marked it as less than sympathetic to the excesses of Middleton's dramatic culture, in much the same way that Shakespeare is`cleaned up' (or refined') for presentation on the post-Restoration stage. 1 And in the Romantic period, with its profound literary concern with the imaginative life of the individual, readers were for the most part similarly unreceptive to Middleton's art. 2 Such historicizing comments provide a possible context for the neglect from which Women Beware Women has suffered. However, more detailed examination is required to determine what it is about Women Beware Women in particular that caused its absence from the repertoire for centuries, only to be rehabilitated in a spectacular fashion in the modern period. Theorizing Early Modern Stage Culture Since the 1980s there has been a significant and long overdue renewal of interest in the circumstances of writing and acting in the Tudor and Stuart playhouses. 3

This special issue presents seven articles developed from contributions to the 2018 conference of the American Society for Cybernetics (ASC), which took place during 7-12 August in Chicago, Illinois. The conference theme “Framing Reality and How It Matters in a Shared World” aimed to encourage presenters to consider how the world we share on a daily basis is socially constructed from diverse concurrently developing viewpoints and narratives.

This special issue presents seven articles developed from contributions to the 2018 conference of the American Society for Cybernetics (ASC), which took place during 7-12 August in Chicago, Illinois. The conference theme “Framing Reality and How It Matters in a Shared World” aimed to encourage presenters to consider how the world we share on a daily basis is socially constructed from diverse concurrently developing viewpoints and narratives.

The intentional and unintentional use of scents have long been implemented in the arts. As an element of design, the use of fragrances may increase audience immersion by engaging the sense of smell through the olfactory receptors, in addition to becoming a tool for the performers. Since the COVID-19 pandemic began, most performing companies have been forced to shift the showcasing of work primarily online. Many of the subtle effects produced by both the cast and the design team that one may appreciate in-person are inevitably lost in virtual theatre, falling secondary to the screen. One potential solution for ensuring that digital productions can continue traditions of theatre while considering the safety of guests would be through the utilization of strategically crafted scents that support the performance’s story and the overall direction of the production. In virtual performances, the use of scent can be useful to ground both the audience and performers within the same world by l...

Olfaction has profoundly shaped human experience and behaviour from the deep past through to the present day. Advanced biomolecular and 'omics' sciences enable more direct insights into past scents, offering new options to explore critical aspects of ancient society and lifeways as well as the historical meanings of smell.

As a museum professional, I work with memories. And nothing is more evocative than scent, which is at the same time both fragile and powerful. Perfumed textiles and costume are a standard part of every culture, yet few objects have been identified, and virtually none have been preserved. Perfuming was traditionally used to mask bad odors from use or from production processes like tanning and dyeing, for ceremonial reasons, or simply to create a favorable impression of the wearer. Perfuming methods included using incense, laundry aids, sweet bags, fragrant oils and fuming pans. Unintentional perfuming also occurred, of which we sometimes get a whiff in our museum collections. Years of research have shown that museums and archives hold the key to this largely forgotten, intangible art. Inventories, tailors’ bills, wardrobe lists, doctors’ accounts, custom duties and other historical sources provide scattered but reliable bits of information about perfuming textiles. I began this line ...

Despite the intense critical interest in the body, we remain firmly within the aesthetics that we have inherited from the nineteenth century in which only two senses, visión and hearing, are considered. In an attempt to redress the neglect of the sense of smell in criticism, the article examines the olfac- tory landscapes in Toni Morrison's Sula (1973), Jamaica Kincaid's

George Orwell once described smell as the real secret of gender relations in the West: 'The female sex smells.' Gender connotation is writ large in almost every sociological/anthropological study of smell. Literature is also full of such references where women's sense of smell has been considered stronger than that of men's. Gaze being the masculine sense greater weightage has been given to it while smell has been deprecated as the feminine sense. Since smell has a deep cultural significance the literature of the Indian diaspora by women is replete with what may be termed 'olfactory analysis.' The smell of nostalgia, of memory and the past; the aroma of native food and all the native fragrances keep haunting; bringing much comfort to the aching heart. While Jhumpa Lahiri's characters are particularly nostalgic about the native food finding refuge in the gustatory, Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni dedicated the space of one novel to spices where her protagonist is the 'Mistress of Spices' herself; Radhika Jha's Smell reminds one of Patrick Suskind's Perfume. Replete with 'olfactory encounters', to borrow Janice Carlisle's expression, the novel is a buildungsroman of Leela Patel, the protagonist whose very being is apparently governed by her nose. I propose to read the olfactory representations in the novels of these women writers with a view to exploring the social, cultural and moral connotations of the olfactory/gustatory.

The article analyses information on religious elements in the representation of senses in literary sources of late imperial China. The Introduction presents psychological and social functions of olfaction with reference to China. The second part deals with the concepts of *xiang*, especially in the meaning of incense, but also the supernatural and symbolic aromas and the pollutant load of its antonym *chou*. The third part offers a survey of other bodily sensations in relation to religion.

OPEN ACCESS: https://doi.org/10.1080/17458927.2021.2020616

In seventeenth-century Damascus and other Ottoman cities, a number of Arabic poets wrote about tobacco smoking, suggesting that this relatively new habit was not only a question of law and social mores for scholarly communities but also pleasure and connoisseurship. Focussing on The Wafting Scent of Fragrant Herbs and a Splash of Liquor in the Tavern, an anthology by the Damascene Muḥammad al-Muḥibbī (d. 1699 CE), this article examines how these poets incorporated tobacco into their poetic world through intertextuality, drawing analogies with other desirable sensory experiences such as wine drinking, and putting tobacco pipes center stage in poetic scenes of homoerotic love. More broadly, it argues that multisensorial perception provided metaphors for literary connoisseurship and sociability in the Ottoman period. This “sensory connoisseurship” – and the incorporation of tobacco as an object of its attention – contributed to articulations of masculinity among poets and audiences who shared poetic and sensory pleasures.

George Orwell once described smell as the real secret of gender relations in the West: ‘The female sex smells. ’ Gender connotation is writ large in almost every sociological/anthropological study of smell. Literature is also full of such references where women’s sense of smell has been considered stronger than that of men’s. Gaze being the masculine sense greater weightage has been given to it while smell has been deprecated as the feminine sense. Since smell has a deep cultural significance the literature of the Indian diaspora by women is replete with what may be termed ‘olfactory analysis. ’ The smell of nostalgia, of memory and the past; the aroma of native food and all the native fragrances keep haunting; bringing much comfort to the aching heart. While Jhumpa Lahiri’s characters are particularly nostalgic about the native food finding refuge in the gustatory, Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni dedicated the space of one novel to spices where her protagonist is the ‘Mistress of Spices...

This special issue presents seven articles developed from contributions to the 2018 conference of the American Society for Cybernetics (ASC), which took place during 7-12 August in Chicago, Illinois. The conference theme “Framing Reality and How It Matters in a Shared World” aimed to encourage presenters to consider how the world we share on a daily basis is socially constructed from diverse concurrently developing viewpoints and narratives.

This essay is a contemplation of the notion of eigenform as explicated by Heinz von Foerster in his paper [4]. In that paper Heinz performs the magic trick of convincing us that the familiar objects of our existence can be seen to be nothing more than tokens for the behaviors of the organism that create stable forms. This is not to deny an underlying reality that is the source of these objects, but rather to emphasize the role of process and the role of the organism in the production of a living map that is so sensitive that map and territory are conjoined. Von Foerster's papers [4,5,6] in the book [3] were instrumental in pioneering the field of second order cybernetics. The notion of an eigenform is inextricably linked with second order cybernetics. One starts on the road to such a concept as soon as one begins to consider a pattern of patterns, the form of form or the cybernetics of cybernetics. Such concepts appear to close around upon themselves, and at the same time they l...

Is gaming becoming funkier? Dancemat interfaces haven't just introduced thumping bass lines to gaming, they also make players sweat. Add the strain of new motion control interfaces such as the Wii, Kinect and Move, and the result is a more pungent smellscape for digital gaming. This has caused some players to rethink their seduction strategies: Seriously, Kinect might just be the first game machine that can make people stink at a party. I guess if you don't want to stink up the party, don't be the first to play Kinect. That girl or guy you are interested in my not like you much because of your Kinect smell. Perhaps it is better to wait till the party is almost over to play Kinect. (booniga 2010) Recently on BoLS (Bell of Lost Souls, a wargames forum), The Girl wrote an article on hygiene among gamers. I was amazed at the amount of flaming that took place in the comment section. People did everything from cry stereotype to bitch about the article being worthless. There definitely is a stereotype out there of the stinky gamer. I hate to break this to you lads and lasses, the stereotype exists because it's true (Crazy Red Praetorians 2010).

Is gaming becoming funkier? Dancemat interfaces haven't just introduced thumping bass lines to gaming, they also make players sweat. Add the strain of new motion control interfaces such as the Wii, Kinect and Move, and the result is a more pungent smellscape for digital gaming. This has caused some players to rethink their seduction strategies: Seriously, Kinect might just be the first game machine that can make people stink at a party. I guess if you don't want to stink up the party, don't be the first to play Kinect. That girl or guy you are interested in my not like you much because of your Kinect smell. Perhaps it is better to wait till the party is almost over to play Kinect. (booniga 2010) Recently on BoLS (Bell of Lost Souls, a wargames forum), The Girl wrote an article on hygiene among gamers. I was amazed at the amount of flaming that took place in the comment section. People did everything from cry stereotype to bitch about the article being worthless. There definitely is a stereotype out there of the stinky gamer. I hate to break this to you lads and lasses, the stereotype exists because it's true (Crazy Red Praetorians 2010).

This volume tackles the role of smell, under-explored in relation to the other senses, in the modern rejection, reappraisal and idealisation of antiquity. Among the senses olfaction in particular has often been overlooked in classical reception studies due to its evanescent nature, which makes this sense difficult to apprehend in its past instantiations. And yet, the smells associated with a given figure or social group convey a rich imagery which in turn connotes specific values: perfumes, scents and foul odours both reflect and mould the ways in which a society thinks or acts. Smells also help to distinguish between male and female, citizens and strangers, and play an important role during rituals. The Smells and Senses of Antiquity in the Modern Imagination focuses on the representation of ancient smells-both enticing and repugnant-in the visual and performative arts from the late 18th century up to the 21st century. The individual contributions explore painting, sculpture, literature and film, but also theatrical performance, museum exhibitions, advertising, television series, historical reenactment and graphic novels, which have all played a part in reshaping modern audiences' perceptions and experiences of the antique.

Among the many abiding oddities of the English academia in India is a strange inability or aversion to practice. Though many of us teach—and love—drama, only very few transition from the happy amateurism of collegiate theatre into the more demanding realms of theatre performed in city auditoriums or community spaces for the general public. Anuradha Marwah is one of those increasingly rare English professors who have been able to do so. As much a novelist as a theatre practitioner, Marwah’s brand of socially committed, left-feminist theatre poses many challenging questions for the nature and direction of theatre pedagogy and practice in and outside the English literary academia in India. Anubhav Pradhan and Sonali Jain discuss theatre, feminism, and society with Marwah in a wide-ranging conversation.

George Orwell once described smell as the real secret of gender relations in the West: 'The female sex smells.' Gender connotation is writ large in almost every sociological/anthropological study of smell. Literature is also full of such references where women's sense of smell has been considered stronger than that of men's. Gaze being the masculine sense greater weightage has been given to it while smell has been deprecated as the feminine sense. Since smell has a deep cultural significance the literature of the Indian diaspora by women is replete with what may be termed 'olfactory analysis.' The smell of nostalgia, of memory and the past; the aroma of native food and all the native fragrances keep haunting; bringing much comfort to the aching heart. While Jhumpa Lahiri's characters are particularly nostalgic about the native food finding refuge in the gustatory, Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni dedicated the space of one novel to spices where her protagonist is the 'Mistress of Spices' herself; Radhika Jha's Smell reminds one of Patrick Suskind's Perfume. Replete with 'olfactory encounters', to borrow Janice Carlisle's expression, the novel is a buildungsroman of Leela Patel, the protagonist whose very being is apparently governed by her nose. I propose to read the olfactory representations in the novels of these women writers with a view to exploring the social, cultural and moral connotations of the olfactory/gustatory.

It was obviously a unique course for it brought together two masters, two outstanding directors. One essentially represented the 1960s, the other – the next generation. Both focused their theatrical activity at that time on working with dialogue. That is, they understood directing as the art of turning dialogue into a game. They understood this art in different ways: one turned dialogue into a game by means of acting demonstrations and by creating emotional threads, or conductors, that he called patternings, while the other used a special art of reasoning and interpretation, which ultimately led to the construction of a structure of playacting. Both initially began working with us in a style that could be called the psychological theatre. Vasilyev practically did nothing in the first six months, he analyzed nothing, as he took pains to get to know us. Efros, on the other hand, leaped into work.

This article is devoted to the study of the medical institutions' influence on the modification of the plot about the Eve's sin in the second half of the XIXth century. In 1896, the inventor of the graphic pun, Henri Avelot, created the caricature "Four arts", singling out "serpentinisme" among artistic trends (such as symbolism). Using this neologism, the cartoonist criticized contemporary art of his time that borrowed physical manifestations of pathologies (for example, hysteria) to create "innovative" art concepts and works. Analyzing major masters' artworks of this period with "serpentine" movements, it can be traced how the development of the health cult and the strengthening of the disciplinary power of hospitals started the process of aestheticizing diseases. As a result, three new iconographic types appeared in French culture: the snake woman; the "Eve's daughter"; the woman and the "phallic serpent", in which the serpent appears as an allegorical embodiment of a doctor. The snake woman image became an aesthetic ideal that permeated all aspects of culture, which was expressed in the neologism "serpentinisme", which ironically brought this trend closer to the artistic direction.

Anatoly Efros (1925–1987) belongs to that special group of Russian artists
and intellectuals who contributed to the era between the early 1950s and
early 1960s known as ‘The Thaw’. The name came from Ilya Ehrenberg’s
eponymous novel of 1954, comparing the atmosphere of the era to climatic
change. Prompted by the succession of moderate leader Nikita Khrushchev
after the death of Joseph Stalin in 1953, the Thaw era witnessed a recovery of
cultural freedom after a prolonged period of chilling censorship. It awakened
a desire to rediscover authentic Russian imagination instead of its Sovietized
surrogate, to escape from Stalin’s wearisome ideas and stereotypes in art
and literature and to feel confident original creative work was possible once
again. Anatoly Efros was one of the leading creative figures of the Thaw era.
His life and work not only contributed to the hopes of that era but also left
an important legacy.