Body representations in art, cinema and literature

身體痛苦不僅是生理反射和生化過程而已，也是個人主觀感受的原型，使患者陷入不可言喻的孤寂和憂傷。如Elaine Scarry所言，痛苦的經驗難以透過語言適切表達，甚至抗拒和摧毀了語言，使患者回到哭喊和呻吟的原始聲音。面對這種表達困境的挑戰，無論是描寫被蛇纏身的勞孔或釘十字架的耶穌，藝術家一向致力以視覺形式傳遞身體所發出的聲音，表達身體處於危機的樣貌、過程和後果。藝術因而使我們探索痛苦的生理、心理、社會、文化意義。
文字和圖像聯合營造痛苦的場景，貫穿芭芭拉‧克魯格1970年代至90年代的作品，包括攝影蒙太奇和多媒體裝置，展示於美術機構、戶外公共場所、書刊和商品等場域，如此顯要的創作主題卻未曾受到藝術史學界應有的重視。她從新聞、廣告、醫學書刊擷取的人體形象，脫離了原本的功能和脈絡，殘缺不全且模糊神秘。在處理成粗粒子且高反差的黑白攝影中，克魯格介入若即若離的文字，使斷裂、受傷、靜默的身體產生發言和溝通的能力。經過編排導演的痛苦宛如疾病、暴力和犯罪的證據，引發觀者從身體的傷痕、表情和姿勢去搜尋線索和情節，思考性別政治和社會關係的問題，而非陷入美學的沉思和奇觀的迷炫中。誠如克魯格的自述：「我所製作的圖文作品以視覺記載著人們身體之間的碰撞，以及建構與控制身體的日夜。」
本文首先討論克魯格早期《醫院》系列中的物化身體與男性醫療權威，第二部分則著重1980年代攝影蒙太奇作品中痛苦和媒體文化、刻板印象和死亡之間的關係，最後將分析1990年代初裝置與戶外看版作品中的情慾與生育所體驗的痛苦。在克魯格的作品中，身體痛苦不僅作為豐富的隱喻，也是社會病變的警訊，例如家庭暴力和愛滋病。本文參照當代藝術、醫學和文化研究等相關論述，探討克魯格如何透過痛苦的主題，喚起文化中日漸麻醉的同理心。

En la posmodernidad el recorrido artístico por el cuerpo tiene todavía bastante de antropomórfico, de orgánico, de referencial, de natural, en línea directa  con las prácticas de body art  de los años setenta, pero sobretodo es un cuerpo que ahonda en el doble y casi siempre contradictorio terreno del simulacro, de lo  artificial, de lo posorgánico, de lo tecnológico, por un lado,  y de lo abyecto y traumático, por otro. Un cuerpo que a causa de la proliferación de las teorías de la subjetividad (de Goethe a Nietzsche, de Freud a Lacan y en especial de Deleuze y Guattari) o de lo que conoce como “multiculturalismo en los modos de construir la subjetividad”,  se convierte en epicentro de numerosas actividades artísticas algunas relacionadas con el deseo, otras con la ideología, la identidad sexual, el género, la escritura, la tecnología. Un cuerpo como tema y significante, como envoltura de la conciencia, como desarrollo de la identidad, como testigo, en suma, de los límites entre el “yo” y el “mundo”.
En este sentido el cuerpo se puede entender como un site , un lugar nada neutral, ni pasivo, sino más bien obsesivo en el que  convergen y se proyectan a la vez discursos críticos y prácticas artísticas que nos llevan a hablar, por un lado, de la experiencia individual del cuerpo (la esfera de la experiencia individual) , pero también  de un cuerpo social, de un cuerpo rasgado y exhibido como un espectáculo, en suma de un cuerpo político abierto a la esfera pública de la experiencia. El cuerpo humano como un campo metodológico cuya experimentación debe ser considerada como la verdadera estética del arte del fin de siglo.
Ya en 1993 Rosalind Krauss en su estudio monográfico sobre Cindy Sherman indicó el camino a seguir: de la mano de Sherman y de sus períodos creativos adentrarnos en una gran diversidad de teorías, desde el  psicoanálisis de Lacan , el feminismo de Mulvey,  la abyección de Kristeva, el simulacro de Baudrillard o la “muerte del autor” de Barthes, teorías que hablan del paso del universo de los simulacros (una nueva forma de ilusionismo que cubre lo real con superficies de simulacro) del posmodernismo posestructuralista al retorno de lo real y lo traumático basado en un ataque a la verticalidad sublimada de las imágenes de arte tradicionales.

Numa das suas múltiplas referências ao céu na sua poesia, Luís Miguel Nava alerta-nos para a possibilidade de num poema se encontrar o "céu em entrelinhas". A frase corresponde a uma arte poética ilustrativa do desejo de representar a experiência do excesso sobre o indivíduo. Refl ectindo sobre esta arte poética e o papel do céu nela desempenhado, aproximo esta poesia da teoria do sublime e do pensamento de Bachelard e Merleau-Ponty, quanto à percepção dos limites do corpo e à relação entre infi nito e intimidade. Documento também a refl exão de Nava sobre a representação do céu em poéticas modernas e contrasto-a com a sua própria linguagem. Por fi m, analiso as mais expressivas fi gurações do céu e a sua evolução ao longo da obra de Nava, surgindo o céu sempre aliado a experiências vitais, tanto pela via do erotismo, quanto, mais tarde, pela via dum desencanto somatizado até às vísceras.

Sophie von La Roche's novel, which now takes pride of place in the canon of eighteenth-century German literature, was published one year before Von der Physiognomik (1772), the essay in which Johann Caspar Lavater laid the groundwork for his best-selling Physiognomische Fragmente zur Beförderung der Menschenkenntnis und Menschenliebe. 1 Even though it predates Lavater's four-volume treatise, Geschichte des Fräuleins von Sternheim draws extensively on the widespread interest in reading, visuality, and the human body that propelled the Swiss pastor to fame during the 18 th century. As the present chapter will elucidate, an analysis of physiognomic and pathognomic details from this novel reveals a writer committed to making a difference in the debate surrounding human physicality, but also in the legitimation of the novel and of female authorship. I will argue that La Roche's use of physiognomy and pathognomy is intimately connected with the specific brand of multi-perspectival narration that she developed, thereby showcasing a level of literary craftsmanship that women were deemed incapable of at that time. More specifically, La Roche adopted the epistolary novel form with its connotations of femininity, naturalness, and authenticity, and she put her own spin on it by developing a polylogic narration through the voices of multiple letter-writing characters who report from different perspectives on one and the same incident. 2

There are several ways in which to recognise an auto-representational drive in the oeuvre of French artist Yves Klein. The possibility of an autobiographical reading of Klein’s oeuvre is therefore without dispute, especially in the cases of his paintings and theoretic writing. Here I argue that the IKB series (usually known as “the blue monochromes”) is a series of auto-portraits. Indeed, I suggest that this interpretation is more coherent with Klein’s motivations and richer in consequences for a theory of auto-fiction.

Questions and experiences regarding the Ethics of representing "others", especially women's and moderate's voices in art and film, from the perspective and professional life of a feminist artivist mamactivist.

I explore three major examples :
A group exhibition of women artists, in which the places of honor and prestige were given to... men.
A solo photography exhibition project on motherhood in which I purposely and intentionally use my subjective voice as a conscious act of rebellion. Because a woman who shows and tells the truth about her subjective experience of mothering was (and still is) quite revolutionary.
The money and media power manipulations going on behind the scenes of an award winning documentary film about women's voices in areas of conflict. Specifically Women's voices regarding the Israeli Palestinian conflict.

Renewed and updated by Author -2016.
Originally Commissioned and Published in 2009 by Maarav (Ambush), one of Israels' leading art and culture online magazines, under the double title "Whose voice is it anyway?" and "Any Woman in the Director's chair?"
(link) http://www.maarav.org.il/english/2009/07/any-woman-in-the-directors-room/

Dissertação apresentada ao Programa de Pós-Graduação em Cinema e Audiovisual da Universidade Federal Fluminense para obtenção do título de Mestra em Cinema e Audiovisual.

Orientadora: Marina Cavalcanti Tedesco
Linha de Pesquisa: Narrativas e Estéticas

http://ppgcine.cinemauff.com.br/egressos/

In the course of the past two decades, “the return of religion” has become a wildly popular term and has been introduced to address the resurgence of religion both in social and cultural sphere. In the field of visual art, there is a wide consensus about the resurgence of religion in contemporary art however many difficulties are yet to be overcome. This article pursues a line of inquiry that seeks to map out the relationship between contemporary art and religion by examining the role of the body as a key site through which “the return of religion” is manifested.

This book is about representations of the body in all fields (fine art, medicine, ethnography, racial studies, biology). It is intended for artists, art students, and people interested in theories of art.

This is the 2021 revision. Every couple of years I rewrite and update this book. The original was published by Stanford University Press in 1999 and is now out of print. This revision (the third "edition") includes examples from contemporary art, and assignments for classroom use.

All comments & questions are welcome!

Establishing an intimate relationship between fictional characters and the viewer is of primary significance to the narrative film. In this chapter, I conceive film viewing as a quasi-intersubjective relationship between the viewer and the (main) character—two bodies involved in a physical, mental and emotional experience, while mediated by a third quasi-body: the film. To explore the nature of this complex relationship, I adopt a phenomenological perspective and rely on the notion of cinematic empathy: a pre-reflexive and ‘immediate’ psycho-physical process through which the viewer experiences a character’s perceptions, thoughts, actions, and emotions via embodied simulation. When conflating the bodily expression the character and the bodily perception of the viewer, a ‘shared experiential space’ emerges. My analysis of a scene of Alfonso Cuarón’s space-exploration film Gravity untangles this notion, placing particular attention on the character’s physical appearance and behaviour (e.g., body postures and facial expressions) in relation to the viewer. I depart from a phenomenological account of cinematic empathy and an ‘embodied’ conception of simulation offered by Belgian experimental psychologist Albert Michotte van der Berck, and subsequently explore relatively new assumptions from neuroscientific research.

This article examines tattooing as an ancient and contemporary form of body inscription and modification. It frames the
popularity of tattooing in the Western World in relation to other modern body modifications and within the landscape of
consumer culture. Showing parallels between the motivations and meanings of contemporary tattoo practices, a historical
overview of tattoos in premodern and non-Western cultures is presented. The divergent ways in which scholars have
approached tattooing is examined, juxtaposing research in the behavioral sciences that links tattoos to deviant and antisocial
behaviors with ethnographic and social–scientific studies that place tattoos within cultural, symbolic, esthetic, and prosocial
frameworks.

El hombre y el arte; el arte y el hombre. Busquemos lo que busquemos y ahondemos lo que ahondemos, puede que la historia del arte no sea más que una (u otra) historia del hombre, y no tanto del propio arte, o al menos, no tan sólo del arte. En todas las épocas y detrás de todas las obras no parece haber más que una vuelta a la eterna pregunta: “qué somos”.

La pregunta fundamental es, ¿por qué la figura humana?; o mejor, ¿por qué aún la figura humana en el arte? Si fue ésta la protagonista del mismo casi desde su nacimiento, si fue repetida una y otra vez y reglada de forma canónica por el arte griego, el renacimiento, y después por la academia, por qué, una vez que el arte consiguió liberarse de toda imposición externa, de toda relación de continuidad con la tradición, seguir tropezando y cayendo en ella. Muchos entendieron que las nuevas posibilidades del arte desde finales del siglo XIX y principios de XX llevaban a una “deshumanización” del mismo, por ello lo más lógico habría sido pensarque la figura humana desapareciera de la historia del arte, quedando el ámbito de reproducción documentación de la misma, de forma mecánica y objetiva, asumido al completo por la fotografía. Lo que nos atañe, y en parte nos sorprende, es que tras la ruptura vanguardista tendente a la abstracción, inaugurada por cubismo, futurismo y constructivismo (entre otros) y continuada por expresionismo abstracto o minimalismo (entre muchos otros), la figura humana haya resistido al envite, manteniéndose como imprescindible en el arte hasta nuestros días.

The medieval space is intrinsically fragmented and heterogeneous, and it is fictionally represented as such in the Continuations of the Conte du Graal. Those narratives make use of the continuity and the discontinuity of the fictional universe in order to shape the connection of the hero with the Other and the Elsewhere. In a world where the Grail is but a pretext to explore otherness and the unknown, the notions of continuity and discontinuity, which are malleable but endowed with a coherent shape and meaning, testify to the existence of a triple bond – a spatial, physical and fictional one.
The chasms, ellipses and gaps in space that run throughout the places show how the hero must confront otherness – that otherness being at times political, fantastic or sacred. The relation of the hero to the world is also organized according to the representation of his sensory perception, his gestures, movements and acts – his body organizes the space around him. The entanglement of those spatial and physical elements map out configurations which we will call fictional loci. Those places are determined by the relation of continuity that the Continuations have established with their hypotexts, of which they prolong both the fictional matter and outline. Displaying a “creative memory”, the Continuations circumvent the literary constraints imposed by their genre. It is from a ceaseless dialectics between intertextual continuity and discontinuity that the narratives and the writing as a continuator emerge.
The scrutiny of space, body and novel writing thus enables to grasp the logic of the continuous and discontinuous, and the way it organizes the narratives in the Continuations.

Au Moyen Âge, l’espace est intrinsèquement fragmenté, hétérogène. Sa représentation fictionnelle dans les Continuations du Conte du Graal le vérifie, ces récits jouant de la continuité et de la discontinuité de leur univers romanesque pour façonner la relation du  héros à l’Autre à l’Ailleurs. Dans un univers où le Graal n’est que prétexte à une exploration de l’altérité et de l’inconnu, les notions de continuité et de discontinuité, malléables mais pourvues d’une forme et d’un sens cohérents, témoignent de la qualité d’un triple lien, spatial, corporel et romanesque.
Les failles, ellipses et clivages spatiaux qui traversent les lieux et l’étendue concrète témoignent de la nature de la confrontation du héros à une altérité politique, merveilleuse ou sacrée. La relation du héros au monde est aussi organisée par sa perception sensible,  ses gestes, mouvements et actions : son corps organise l’espace autour de lui. L’enchevêtrement de ces données spatiales et corporelles dessinent des configurations que nous nommons des lieux romanesques. Ces lieux sont déterminés par la relation de continuité que les Continuations établissent avec leurs hypotextes dont elles continuent la matière et la trame narrative. Faisant preuve d’une « mémoire inventive », les Continuations louvoient avec les contraintes d’écriture que leur impose leur statut générique. C’est par une incessante dialectique de la continuité et de la discontinuité intertextuelle que naissent les récits et l’écriture continuatrice.
L’étude de l’espace, du corps et de l’écriture romanesque permet donc de comprendre les logiques du continu et du discontinu et la façon dont elles organisent les récits des Continuations.

Full t erm s and condit ions of use: ht t p: / / www.t andfonline.com / page/ t erm s-and-condit ions This art icle m ay be used for research, t eaching, and privat e st udy purposes. Any subst ant ial or syst em at ic reproduct ion, redist ribut ion, reselling, loan, sub-licensing, syst em at ic supply, or dist ribut ion in any form t o anyone is expressly forbidden.

Francuskie słowo "mesure" można tłumaczyć jako umiar albo pomiar. Z kolei słowo "rage" jako wściekłość, złość. narzędziem, za pomocą którego artystka tworzyła podziały na podłodze. Na końcu każdej z akcji MesuRage zdejmowała uniform, prała go w wiaderku z wodą, by potem przelać ją do butelek, pieczętowanych na końcu woskiem. Uczyniła ze swojego ciała "polityczną" jednostkę miary, podniosła temat kobiet w instytucjach i miejscach zdominowanych jej zdaniem przez mężczyzn, jednocześnie podkreślając rolę kobiecego ciała w historii sztuki. Operacje na własnym ciele Seria performansów chirurgicznych -La Réincarnation de Sainte ORLAN (Ponowne wcielenie świętej ORLAN) -to dokładnie zaplanowane działania o inwazyjnym charakterze, mające na celu trwałą zmianę wyglądu. Nie służyły poprawianiu urody artystki, niwelowaniu niedoskonałości, wręcz przeciwnie -stanowiły krytyczne odniesienie się do funkcjonujących standardów piękna. ORLAN w bezkompromisowy sposób pokazała, że konsekwentne dążenie do nieosiągalnego ideału piękna, narzuconego przez klasyczną estetykę, może paradoksalnie doprowadzić do brzy doty w ujęciu tych samych tradycyjnych kategorii.

This book is about representations of the body in all fields (fine art, medicine, ethnography, racial studies, biology). It is intended for artists, art students, and people interested in theories of art.

This is the 2021 revision. Every couple of years I rewrite and update this book. The original was published by Stanford University Press in 1999 and is now out of print. This revision (the third "edition") includes examples from contemporary art, and assignments for classroom use.

All comments & questions are welcome!

Ces dernières années ont vu se développer un important effort théorique et critique sur la question du corps au cinéma : comment ce dernier représente-t-il les formes du corps mais aussi ses puissances (gestes, désirs, pulsions, tendances hors cadre, hors champs, hors discours ou hors normes) ? Comment rend-il compte des contextes cognitifs, culturels, politiques et technologiques associés à – ou affectés par – la fabrique des corps à travers l’histoire ? Les films eux-mêmes ont eu recours au corps comme fi gure ou motif privilégié et ont pleinement participé de ce questionnement. Contribuant à cette réflexion en cours le présent volume s’attache à étudier la question de la représentation corporelle en la rapportant à celle des devenirs concrets du cinéma, que ce soit dans ses dispositifs propres ou ses rencontres avec d’autres régimes d’image (notamment la vidéo et la photographie). C’est sur ces théâtres que se déploient les études réunies ici,chacune avec sa méthodologie et ses objets propres mais toutes envisageant la notion élargie de corps-image (au sens d’une matériologie générale du cinéma) comme possible
paradigme critique.

Although there has been an increased interest in tattooing among the middle-classes, the contemporary tattoo population is quite heterogeneous. A tattoo has numerous meanings and is located within a broad range of social contexts. As Steward (1990) fittingly observes, individual motivations for getting a tattoo are extraordinarily varied including:

A partir de la película "El libro de cabecera" ("The Pillow Book", 1996) del británico Peter Greenaway, se discute la posición del cuerpo en el arte desde las ópticas oriental y occidental. Sobre esta última concepción, se discute al cuerpo como herramienta en expresiones del arte contemporáneo como el performance y  la incorporación del tatuaje en obras de arte.

Confrontando alcuni testi selezionati a campione da L'Allegria di Giuseppe Ungaretti, da alcune Poesie sparse di Clemente Rebora, dal Giornale di guerra e di prigionia di Carlo Emilio Gadda e da Un anno sull'altipiano di Emilio Lussu, si cercherà di delineare come gli autori presi in esame descrivono la brutalità della morte in trincea soprattutto in riferimento alle immagini dei corpi dilaniati dei soldati. Il filo che lega i diversi scrittori è un'esasperata tensione tra la crudeltà del linguaggio volta a restituire l'immagine veritiera della morte e un senso di pudore descrittivo, come se questo rispondesse ad un tentativo di rimozione e di censura del reale.

prose author, essay writer, theorist, doctor, and film buff. One name, multiple personalities-and not all of them compatible, as Döblin himself acknowledged. In an autobiographical essay from 1928, whose title "Zwei Seelen in einer Brust" is a clear riff on Faust's famous lamentation "Zwei Seelen wohnen, ach! in meiner Brust," the physician Döblin and the writer Döblin appear as distinct individuals talking about each other in a teasing, antagonistic manner. The publications of the latter leave the former "total gleichgültig" (Döblin 1986: 103), and the writer does not mince words either, calling the neurologist "mein gerades Gegenstück" (ibid: 105). This dramatization of Döblin's divided allegiances was originally meant to be satirical, but over time it fueled the idea of an unbridgeable gap between his medical and literary pursuits. Recent scholarship has successfully challenged this misconception. Critics have started to look at Döblin's medical writings in conjunction with his literary texts by way of demonstrating that an integrated approach is not just possible and worthwhile, but necessary in the case of someone with such varied interests. Untangling the intricacies of Döblin's thinking on psychopathology and on other pressing issues of the time can shed new light on his fictional works, as well as on the interaction between literature and other disciplines during the early 20 th century. In the spirit of this recent shift in critical paradigm, I wish to argue in this chapter that physical descriptions from Döblin's novel of 1929 relate in complex ways to contemporaneous developments in mental health, novel writing, visual media, and politics. The Case Against Psychology Berlin Alexanderplatz is widely considered the most prominent novel of German modernism. The plot is notoriously hard to follow, because it is often interrupted by info-bites, similar to the consciousness of the modern city dwellers that populate Döblin's fiction. In a nutshell, the book documents the painstaking adjustment to freedom and to life in the big city of Franz Biberkopf, who is released from prison

The paper analyses the re-conceptualization of the intermedial trope of the tableau vivant in recent East European cinema through several examples from Hungarian and Russian films directed by György Pálfi, Kornél Mundruczó, Benedek Fliegauf, Béla Tarr, and Andrei Zvyagintsev. The tableau vivant in these films is not conceived primarily as an embodiment of a painting, the introduction of “the real into the image” (as Brigitte Peucker described), instead it appears more like the objectification of bodies as images, and something that we can associate with what Mario Perniola considers the “sex appeal of the inorganic” or “the Egyptian moment in art.” As such, the tableau becomes a powerful agent in generating metanarratives, offering a blueprint for a “big picture,” a comprehensive vision of the world (reinforced by recurring mythological themes like the genesis or the end of the world, the loss of Paradise, etc.). We may connect this feature of these tableaux vivants, therefore, to what Lyotard termed as the “figure of return,” and to the reconstructive tendencies of contemporary post-postmodern art.

Resumen: El presente artículo versa sobre la actitud crítica de Francisco de Quevedo hacia los artes ocultas en general y hacia la fisiognomía en particular. Estudiaré la manera en que el autor expresa su escepticismo frente a ellos y los relega al ámbito de lo científicamente inválido utilizando una modalidad estilística caracterizada por la extrema brevedad y agudeza verbal. Palabras Clave: Francisco de Quevedo, fisiognomía, agudeza, literatura y ciencia. Abstract: The aim of this paper is to examine Francisco de Quevedo's disdain for the occult sciences in general and for physiognomy in particular. I will focus on how, in a very witty way, the author unmasks these divinatory practices as charlatanism. He does so by means of a stylistic framework characterized by its extreme concision.

El cuerpo como mercancía en la sociedad globalizada 1 Resumen Este artículo es una aproximación analítica al reality show Cambio extremo. Se plantea la intersección cuerpo, realidad-espectáculo y globalización, para explicar cómo el programa ha contribuido a legitimar la cirugía estética como una práctica garante de la consecución de un cuerpo acorde con las exigencias de la sociedad global. El mercado y el consumo convierten el cuerpo en mercancía que promete el triunfo en ciertos ámbitos de la sociedad globalizada, discurso paradójico reforzado por el reality show. Cambio extremo no es un mero programa televisivo; es un texto cultural que da cuenta de la tendencia en nuestra sociedad globalizada en la que lo virtual parece superar lo real. Cuando se pretende forzar la realidad-real a ser idéntica a la realidad-show, se propicia un desajuste en la organización del orden social. En la alteración del cuerpo existe un intento por aniquilar su condición natural de imperfección, encaminado a la consecución de un cuerpo acorde con las exigencias de la época-mundo.

O presente artigo tem como principal objetivo discutir as
relações entre corpo e autoinscrição no documentário Não é um filme
caseiro (No Home Movie, 2015), dirigido por Chantal Akerman. A partir da
análise fílmica e da revisão bibliográfica realizada, concluímos que a
relação estabelecida entre o corpo da cineasta e o corpo fílmico
materializa uma estratégia de autoria performática, assim demarcando a
posição subjetiva que emerge da corporalidade e da presença de

This article interprets recent historical novels by Daniel Kehlmann and César Aira that represent Latin American space as intimately connected with art and fiction. Kehlmann's Die Vermessung der Welt explores New World topographies to argue that scientific and artistic approaches to the understanding of the environment are similar, while Aira's Un episodio en la vida del pintor viajero represents Latin America as a creative territory that violently resists scientific European incursions. Both novels remove Latin American landscapes from their sociopolitical contexts and conflate them with the artificiality of fiction. This perception represents a perspective on Latin America from outside its borders: the fantasized landscape serves to exoticize the region.

Nobel laureate Niko Tinbergen coined the term ‘supernormal stimulus’ after discovering that birds who lay small, pale blue eggs speckled with grey prefer to sit on larger, bright blue eggs with black polka-dots. He found that he could exaggerate the key qualities of any natural stimulus to produce a stronger reaction yet--be it nurturance, courtship, fear or aggression.
    Animals encounter supernormal stimuli mostly when experimenters build them.  Humans can generate their own and media are awash with them: friendly smiling faces more consistently welcoming than ones own friends, animated cartoon characters with wider eyes than any real child’s, seductive bodies exceeding any proportions found in nature, and a huge array of supernatural menaces.
    This chapter examines film, television, spectator sports, video games, and social websites as well as more traditional media such as print and musical performance in terms of the concept of supernormal stimuli.

Di cosa parliamo quando parliamo di corpi (parlando di cinema) LUCA MALAVASI I l problema della corporeità del/nel cinema ha ricevuto solo di recente un'adeguata attenzione in sede teorica e analitica.1 Si stenterebbe a crederlo, considerati la centralità del corpo-attore nella logica narrativa del film, il dibattito, antico quanto la teoria del cinema, attorno all'"impressione di realtà" o, ancora, la tendenza precoce ad "antropomorfizzare" la tecnologia cinematografica allo scopo di fondare la possibilità di un discorso estetico in rapporto al film.

This book is about representations of the body in all fields (fine art, medicine, ethnography, racial studies, biology). It is intended for artists, art students, and people interested in theories of art.

This is the 2013 revision. (The last two chapters were not updated in 2021.) The original was published by Stanford University Press in 1999 and is now out of print.

All comments & questions are welcome!

Frida Kahlo ha sufrido lecturas muy pobres. No podemos negar que su obra está ligada a su cuerpo, un cuerpo roto por razones que la mayoría conocemos y que por el momento no importan. Un cuerpo doliente del que poco podía despegarse. Sin embargo, hemos desperdiciado cada momento, hemos desgastado esfuerzos hablando de Kahlo, la pintora, como una mera ilustradora de su dolor; como la gran dibujante de su tormento físico y así, en múltiples lecturas acerca de su legado, encontramos palabras como pierna, columna, matriz, polio, padecimiento, enfermedad, corsé, fajas, reposo, aborto.

Frida Kahlo estuvo lejos de querer dibujar la historia de
México con hache mayúscula. A la pintora poco le interesó
llenar de significados los grandes muros de edificios
emblemáticos. Lo interesante de Kahlo, lo que obviamos
en la mayoría de nuestras lecturas de su obra, es lo radical
e innovador de su temática, y no únicamente porque sus tragedias acumuladas cuentan una historia interesante, sino porque argumentar que el arte puede, y quizá siempre es de una u otra forma autobiográfico, pone en cuestionamiento la objetividad de la pintura y sitúa al artista en el centro del debate.

Fund and Loza's Los Labios/The Lips (2010) and Berger's Plan B (2009) implement various strategies to create a sense of the Other's corporeal experience as something perceivable by the audience. The main cinematic technique is the use of the close-up. This article highlights this particular shot as an aesthetic device that highly contributes to establish an embodied environment for spectatorship. This quality defines these films' political character since it displays an awareness of the Other's corporeality as part of the Self. Hence, it is possible to make of cinema an intersubjective experience in which bodies become empowered means of connection. By applying Jenny Chammarette's 'phenomenological approach', which derives from Maurice Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology and Vinodh Venkatesh's notion of 'affective schemas', this article incorporates a diverse theoretical framework to mostly focus on bodies and the cinematic environments that they inhabit.