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This article examines contemporary English-language research on multiplayer role-playing games. There can be identified several large problematic areas. The article aims to trace how the largest of them are formed, to describe the process of their emergence and development at the present time, as well as to describe the main points that researchers have worked out. The discussion of this topic makes it possible to understand how the conceptual apparatus of the research on multiplayer role-playing games is changing in modern English-language studies.One of the major problematic areas is related to the study of the participants' motivation in multiplayer role-playing games. This problematic area seeks to answer the question: "What keeps players coming back to the same game over and over again?" Scientists working in this field believe that players return to virtual worlds to get opportunities for virtual earnings, a variety of social interactions, role-playing, and because of the spirit of exploration. Another problematic area is based on the study of player-to-player relationships and explores the construction of social connections around a video game. The researchers are interested in the issues of leadership and social consolidation, which takes the form of guilds in multiplayer role-playing games. The third major problematic area arises from the study of player self-identification. The scientists are trying to understand which parts of a player's identity influence their experience and how it is mediated. The research on multiplayer role-playing games is a complex interdisciplinary phenomenon that requires involving specialists from different fields, in particular economists, sociologists, linguists.

This paper discusses the phenomenon of "russerie" ("Russian theme") and its specific embodiment in the work of the French engraver and artist Jean-Baptiste Le Prince (1734—1781). A student of François Boucher (1703—1770), he consistently developed the rocaille aesthetics of his teacher. Le Prince arrived in St. Petersburg in 1757. After spending five years in Russia, the artist returned to his homeland in France. Over the next decade, reflecting on the impressions received during his trip to Russia, he created numerous works devoted to the "Russian theme". It was these works that formed the basis for "russerie" — a new genre of exoticism in European art. The most outstanding examples of the "Russian theme" in graphics are the prints produced in the new engraving method called lavis, invented by Le Prince (1769). These prints, creating the illusion of a watercolor drawing in printed graphics, have hardly attracted the attention of Russian scholars until recently. This article, for the first time, consistently examines the features of this technique and, basing on a number of archival documents, presents the reconstruction of public opinion and the evaluation of these works by the audience. The central part in the article is devoted to the "Russian theme" in lavis. There is shown the originality of "russerie" in lavis on the plot and stylistic levels. Besides, the article considers the relationship of this theme with "chinoiserie" and "turquerie". In addition, the author outlines the development prospects of the "Russian theme", which appeared under the influence of prints in the manner of lavis.

The article deals with the comprehension of the phenomenon of urban identity in general and its sign-symbolic level in particular. By urban identity in the context of the presented scientific text, we mean a set of authentic features and characteristics, inherent in a particular city, that perform an attributive function, allowing to differentiate it from other cities; the process and result of a person's identification with the city, based on the acceptance of its identity, on the emotional entry into the space of its material and sign-symbolic environment. The sign-symbolic level of urban identity assumes personal mastering of the city's semiotic environment, its inclusion in the space of the event and emotional experience of its inhabitants, transformation of the objects of the city's sign-symbolic space into a set of "memory places".The author of the article conducted a culturological study of the urban identity of the residents of industrial cities of the Southern Urals (semi-formalized interviewing method; the array of respondents — 270 people), including its sign-symbolic component. Its specific features are culturocentricity (predominance of man-made sign-symbolic objects over natural and mixed ones); commemorativeness (dominance of memorial objects — memorial sculpture and sculptural compositions, museums, ethnoparks, historical buildings, other monuments of historical and cultural heritage — over objects of other types); retro-orientation (predominance of objects temporally associated with the past, mainly with the Soviet period); monotony (limited range of objects chosen by residents of one city); syncretism (identity of objects aimed at different audiences); collectivism (total predominance of objects — signs of group identity); centrality (centripetal localization of objects, their location mainly in the city center). The results of the conducted research allow us to speak, with a significant degree of confidence, about the very clearly manifested features of the Southern Urals cities inhabitants' perception of their own small Homeland, about the problematic and strengths of the existing urban identity, the vectors of its correction and improvement.

The distraction of the population from drunkenness and from deviant forms of spending free time in general was not only an urgent socio-cultural issue, but also an important state and social task in the Russian Empire in the second half of the 19th — early 20th centuries. One of the ways to solve this problem in the Russian army was the creation of soldier theaters in military units. On the basis of a wide range of pre-revolutionary sources, the article for the first time presents the history of the theaters creation and development. There are revealed the main purposes of the soldier theaters in the Russian army: 1) to distract from drunkenness and other forms of deviant behavior; 2) to promote the moral education of lower ranks; 3) to provide them with an alternative option for leisure — pleasant and useful. The article presents the main results of studying the book catalogs of soldiers' libraries in order to identify in them special sections dedicated to theater publications, which allow reconstructing the potential repertoire of the soldier theaters, and when analyzing regimental histories — the real one. The article reveals the role of officers in setting up and functioning of the theaters. There is presented the experience of organizing the theaters for lower ranks in the German army of the same period, purposefully studied by official Russian agents for use in the Russian army. The conducted research made it possible to clarify the tasks of creating the soldier theaters, their repertoire and features of functioning. The revealed positive experience of conducting useful and pleasant leisure in the form of setting up soldier theaters can be useful today in organizing free time for both servicemen of the Russian army and the civilian population of the country.

The article discusses the issue of understanding the nature of solitude and its reflection in art, including some aspects of solitude in the digital age. There is noted that this topic has hardly been explored in art history, including in studies on street art, which determines the relevance of this article. The author emphasizes that in art solitude is a filter through which the artist learns to see the world, transforms his/her experience into images, and enters into a dialogue with the viewer. The article examines the reflection of the issue of solitude in contemporary art on the basis of the works of the French street artist JR (he does not give his full name), in particular his video installation "Chronicles of San Francisco". Most of JR's creative projects focus on overcoming solitude and isolation: social, gender, race, age, cultural, etc. The author explains the choice of a video installation as the most optimal means for communication between the artist and the viewer. The article highlights the technical and technological innovation of JR's video installation "Chronicles of San Francisco": the artist's approach to revealing several layers of the issue of social isolation and solitude; equalizing the objects by using the same color and light exposure; supplementing the video image with "untold stories" of the sitters via an application for mobile phones; creating the overall composition dynamics of the arrangement of the 1206 figures and the background through visualization of different types and layers of solitude. The results of the study will be useful to art historians and students studying contemporary art and street art.

The article examines the relationship between the literary work of V.I. Nemirovich-Danchenko that preceded the opening of the Moscow Art Theater, and his directorial activity. For him, journalism, fiction and drama formed a unity that had a serious impact on his pedagogical and staging practice. The main issues related to the topic of the work have been repeatedly raised by researchers of theater and literature, but have not yet come to the attention of musicologists, which determines the main parameter of the study's novelty. In this context, the article aims at pinpointing the actual musical textual details, and its main methodology is based on the interpretation of statements and their comparison with the factual theater history. The article attempts to review the "favorite repertoire" of V.I. Nemirovich-Danchenko as a writer — the musical works mentioned in his novels, stories and plays. There is also identified the "projections" of such sympathies on the design of performances. The article reveals fundamental differences in V.I. Nemirovich-Danchenko's attitude to vocal and instrumental music, the special role of opera in his perception of the world. There is noted the tendency to attach special semantic and moral-ethical meaning to sound components, as well as the affordance, opened in dramas of the late 1890s, of maximum avoidance of noise elements for the sake of relief identification of a word. The article ends with an attempt to substantiate from a musical standpoint the failure of the drama "In Dreams" at its first and only staging at the Moscow Art Theater (1901). The conclusion contains a number of findings characterizing the musicality of V.I. Nemirovich-Danchenko in 1898, at the time of the opening of his theater. There are partially highlighted the stages of his evolution not mentioned before, which led the director to experiments in the genre of tragedy at the turn of the 1910s and 1920s, the foundation of his own opera studio and the revision of literary positions that remained relevant for the last decades of his life and work.

The article is a special study, of a historical and theoretical nature, dedicated to the stage poetics of M.A. Zakharov's play "Mystification" (1999) of the Moscow Lenin Komsomol Theater (now the Moscow State Theater "Mark Zakharov Lenkom", hereinafter — Lenkom), that is the study of Zakharov's production from the point of view of finding out what techniques and methods were used to carry it out. The subject of the study are the components of Zakharov's directing methodology: the plot and the ways of structuring it; the decoration design of the stage and the capabilities for its transformation; the episodic structure of the action, the attractions, sideshows; the genre nature of the production; and other. In addition to the reconstruction and analysis of the Lenkom production from the point of view of the director's technique used, the task of the research also includes determining the place and role of the play among Zakharov's productions, which study the peculiarities of the Russian national mentality by means of the theater. The sources of the study are the director's statements, reviews of the play, iconography, and personal impressions from watching the TV version of the play. The research methodology is based on the classical principles and approaches to performance reconstruction and analysis of the Leningrad (Gvozdev) School of Theater Studies, as well as on the method of contextual analysis. The Lenkom leader managed to create a compact, dynamic and spectacular stage fantasy based on Gogol's texts, the purpose of which is to comprehend the Russian life at the turn of the centuries, and the director's plot is to study the features of the Russian mentality as a factor determining the past and future of Russia. "Mystification", together with the performances "A Barbarian and a Heretic" (1997) and "The Jester Balakirev" (2001), made up a stage trilogy, which summed up the gloomy results of the 1990s and quite clearly expressed the peculiar meta-plot of Zakharov's productions of the beginning of the 21st century — the conditionality of the fate of Russia by specific qualities of the national mentality.

The Russian State Library holds one of the largest collections of Russian posters. Film posters from the time before the cinematography nationalization in 1919 are presented there in more than 250 sheets. Most of them advertise Russian films, more than a third — foreign ones, 25 sheets — documentary cinematography and newsreels of the Russian branch of the French firm "Pathé Brothers".Recently, there has been a growing researchers' interest in this period. Active popularization is being carried out by holding exhibitions and publishing catalogs of the largest collections, this phenomenon is discussed in detail at the beginning of the article.As well as cinematography, a film poster is a synthetic work. It represents a piece of graphic art, which is a commercial advertisement for another type of art. This research is aimed at studying film posters as a historical source that can tell us a lot: about characteristic social trends, about filmmaking as a process and about films themselves, about tendencies in the visual arts, about advertising of that period in general and about itself as a new type of advertising in particular.The article shows the history of the film poster formation as a product of commercial advertising and its subsequent development into a separate type of spectacular poster. There is analyzed its potential as a source on the history of cinema. In conclusion, the film posters are presented as a reflection of the era and society, which reacts to fundamental changes in the country.

The lubok of the 1920s is a little-studied page of Soviet art. The tradition of using lubki (popular prints) and folklore for revolutionary propaganda goes back to the 19th century. The first part of the article examines the cases of using the lubki in the revolutionary movement. The Narodniks were the first who used the lubok literature form for revolutionary propaganda among peasants. The Narodniks' "ryazhenaya" ("mummer") literature masked in lubok clothing both for the purposes of conspiracy and for attractiveness for the peasantry. Before the October Revolution, the lubok had been mainly used by the Narodniks and Socialist-Revolutionaries who positioned themselves as a peasant party. After the revolution, the Bolsheviks also used the lubok form when it was necessary to broadcast Marxist ideas to the countryside. For this purpose, they used Soviet popular prints (Soviet lubki) and lubok books (propaganda prints). The second part of the article is dedicated to Soviet popular prints. At first, the Soviet lubki were oriented in their pictorial form on old traditional folk prints, and in their texts — on folklore. They imitated folk speech and took over ditties (chastushki) from the new Soviet folklore. From the second half of the 1920s, the Soviet lubok started changing its form, transforming into a reproduction from realistic easel paintings. The third part of the article considers the lubok books and agro tales for peasants. There is shown that the Soviet lubok books in their form also resembled pre-revolutionary ones.

For the first time in Russian historiography, the article reconstructs the history of the School of Selected Students, established in 1747 as an additional link of academic art education. The article uses cultural-historical and socio-psychological approaches. The author refers to the numerous sources of the 18th—19th centuries stored in the National Library of France (Paris): treatises devoted to upbringing and art education in France in the 18th century, protocols of the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture, correspondence of the directors of the French Academy in Rome with the directors of royal buildings. Currently, the National Library of France is actively working on digitizing these and other materials, making them available to researchers around the world. Despite the fact that these sources are generally well known to the world scientific community, they have been extremely rarely referred by Russian researchers, and never in the context considered by the author.The School existed for only 28 years and was a unique pedagogical experiment aimed at preparing the most talented (selected) young artists (laureates of the Prix de Rome) to enter the French Academy in Rome and, in the long term, at forming the elite of the art world.In order to review the School of Selected Students in the system of French academic art education, the author solves the following research tasks: consistently reconstructs all the circumstances of the School's foundation and organization, reveals its creators' intentions, and also explains the position of its opponents, who, with their constant attacks, created a tense discussion field around the existence of this educational institution. In addition, the article identifies the names of major artists who left the School of Selected Students; examines its internal structure, charter, features of the educational process; defines the circle of people who were engaged in teaching; establishes which books were available to students. The author pays attention to the School's everyday life: the relationship between students and mentors, discipline, daily routine, financial difficulties. The results obtained allow us to conclude that this experiment was successful, and explain why the School of Selected Students was closed without having existed for 30 years, despite the obvious successes of its graduates.

Global changes and challenges of the 21st century have significantly changed both the conditions for the social functioning of art and its audience. This has shifted the focus of contemporary research interests from creating a socio-cultural portrait of the viewer to the area of comprehending new forms of cultural consumption, the origins and drivers of cultural activity. These aspects of the socio-cultural dynamics of the theater audiences are discussed in this paper, which continues the publication of the results of a large-scale sociological study of the audience of the Chekhov Moscow Art Theater. Our interest is primarily due to the historically formed special perception of this theater by the public, which distinguishes the Moscow Art Theater from other theaters of the country. Basing on the empirical data of sociological polls of two types — in the theater auditorium and on the Internet — and using the methods of mathematical statistics, we identify those features that most characterize the modern theater audience and reflect fundamentally new trends in its cultural activity. We note the stratification of the theater audience on completely new qualitative grounds and the establishment of a new cultural phenomenon at the forefront of theatrical life — the online theater-fan. To answer the question about the existence of a certain "generic peculiarity" of the Moscow Art Theater audience, which in previous years embodied the legendary Moscow Art Theater tradition, we tried to identify the latent features of the audience that are not reducible to the traditional quantitative measurements of spectator activity. The findings of the study are unexpected. In some ways they disappoint, but at the same time they explain a lot in the current trends of cultural consumption. They supplement the theoretical landscape with empirical data on the qualitative and behavioral characteristics of the modern theater audience and its cultural activity, which is steadily drifting into the online space. Theoretically comprehending the results obtained we fit them into the broad context of international studies of cultural life. So, behind the particular features of specific audience groups, we can catch the manifestations of global cultural processes that determine the current sociodynamics of the audience of art.

Throughout history, self-portraits have been a product of a certain cultural framework, reflecting the aesthetic notions of the era, the concepts of the nature of creativity and human essence. A surge of interest in self-portraiture is usually observed during unstable, critical times, which require the artist to rethink the fundamental principles of existence and art. One of those periods was the beginning of the 20th century in Russia, when changes, radical in their degree and intensity, became the context for the emergence of numerous artistic systems that took different approaches to the purpose of an artist and his/her role in society. At a time when subjective perception becomes the defining strategy of art, self-portraits are intended to reflect the complexity of life and bring the author and the ideas together on the canvas.This article analyzes some of the key trends in the transformation of self-portraiture in Russian art at the beginning of the 20th century. For many artists of that period, self-portraiture remained a sphere of self-exploration and giving meaning to one's personal experience: Z. Serebriakova, M. Chagall, K. Petrov-Vodkin and others created series of self-portraits, capturing their states at different stages of their artistic journey. Often, self-portraits became an artistic expression of the author's philosophical and aesthetic program, and the imperative of the idea prevailed over the imperative of physical resemblance. For instance, avant-garde artists (members of the Jack of Diamonds, K. Malevich) frequently reduced their visual image to a mask, an inanimate object, or an abstract composition. It is not only the artist's image that undergoes changes, but also the space around him/her: self-portraits acquire a mythological dimension, which is created by the author as a demiurge.

The article is devoted to the history of the Moscow magazine "Construction and Decorative Art", which played a significant role in Russian art criticism in 1903, despite its short (within six months) existence. This topic needs to be addressed due to the small number of comprehensive studies in the field of Russian art criticism of the early 20th century. On the basis of archival materials of censorship, the article reconstructs the creation circumstances of two homogeneous magazines ("Architecture and Decorative Art", renamed "Free Art", and "Construction and Decorative Art") and their actual transformation into one press organ. There is examined the rapprochement of the architects Vasily Borin and Leonid Betelev with the scandalous journalist Alexey Filippov, their struggle for the permission to publish a new Moscow magazine about art in 1900—1902, the patronizing attitude of the Main Directorate for Press Affairs and the Moscow Governor-General to the new initiative of Filippov. The author introduces into scientific circulation important recorded sources related to the transfer of the rights to publish the magazine to Vasily Borin, and his attempt to pass off the former magazine of Filippov and Betelev as his own (hitherto non-existent) magazine "Free Art". The article analyzes three issues of the illustrated magazine "Construction and Decorative Art" published in 1903. Basing on the data on the magazine's format and prices, the author concludes that the publication turned out to be expensive and, therefore, unprofitable. The article pays particular attention to the views of Borin and Filippov on the development of contemporary art, Art Nouveau, and the activities of the artists of the group "Mir Iskusstva" ("World of Art"). In the context of a meaningful analysis of the magazine's articles, there is discussed the honoring of the architect Nikolai Nikitin in connection with his anniversary. The author poses the question of how the issues of "Free Art" at the end of 1903 should be assessed. There are analyzed the causes for the mysterious closure of both the magazines in 1904—1905, which was not formalized in accordance with the law.

The article is devoted to contemporary problems of humanistics. It comprehends the essence of humanistics (the term was introduced by the modern philosopher, culturologist and linguist M. Epstein) as a totality of the humanities, completed by humanitarian technologies and humanitarian invention. There is discussed the importance of breaking the trend towards total technicism to the detriment of humanism in human, which is associated with the total onset of modern technologies for the development of artificial intelligence. The author expresses the idea of the importance of reviving the relevance of humanism in human, since the uncontrolled development of information and communication technologies can lead, according to modern humanitarian researchers (Yu. Harari), to a pessimistic scenario of the regressive evolution of humankind up to its disappearance. The article emphasizes the importance of the parity development of natural and artificial in modern society. The author draws attention to the need to revive the importance of such humanitarian sciences as cultural studies, aesthetics, and to stimulate the development of new humanitarian areas. A special place today should be occupied by the renewal of understanding of the importance of socio-cultural and artistic practices from the point of view of both enriching spiritual production and developing skills for mastering and comprehending their meanings by wide audiences to create the necessary conditions for the formation of a "complex person". The article presents the origins of the discussion of "physicists and lyricists". There are demonstrated various positions of researchers on the issues of passivity and activity of humanitarians to explain the current state of humanism. There is a paradoxical discrepancy between attitudes towards pragmatism, technological innovation and the development of a creative class, the essence of which is close collaboration with creative professions. Leaders of innovative information industries (S. Jobs, B. Gates, M. Zuckerberg, etc.) show their close relationship with humanitarian knowledge and values. The article presents and analyzes examples of humanitarian technologies and inventions that are recognized by the world community and continue to be in demand until the present time, even though they were created in different cultural and historical epochs and in different countries. The author pays attention to socio-cultural inventions in the field of pedagogy, especially artistic.

The article considers a question mainly unexplored — the history of German book art of the 18th century. There are outlined the main trends in the evolution of German books and highlighted their stylistic varieties. The "archaic" style, inherited from the 17th century, has its characteristic disharmony, rough types, and eclectic ornamenting. It remains relevant until the 1770s. From the 1730s, a style called here the "Leipzig classic" strives to overcome the limitations of the archaic. Its development is related to the partnership of the poet J.C. Gottsched and the publisher B.K. Breitkopf, and to the short period in German literature when classical standards prevailed. Probably, the Leipzig publishers' practice directly affected the Russian book style of the third quarter of 18th century. In the 1750s, the literary program of the writer J.J. Bodmer and the circle of Zurich writers, opponents of J.C. Gottsched, fused with the publishing program associated with an attempt of some fundamental reforms. Bodmer himself, and later the poet Salomon Gessner, were co-owners of the largest Zurich publishing company. Through that, the original "Zurich" style appeared, heralding the future book "empire" style. Its most characteristic features are the Roman-faced type instead of the Gothic type and the lack of ornamentation. The end of the century typography is marked by some further evolution of the "Leipzig classic" style, the Gothic type standardization, and later the Roman-faced type standardization as well ("Walbaum" type). Consequently, German books of the 18th century represent a complex and uneven evolution, with huge regional differences and directly or indirectly related to the development of national literature, which is a phenomenon that cannot be observed in other European countries.