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 explores the process of formation of competing discourses by different subjects of cultural policy, revealing deep discrepancies in the strategies of their interaction and the need to develop new models. There is noted the multi-subject nature of cultural policy and the decentralization of the culture management system, as well as the importance of the scientific and analytical justifications and conventional principles that ensure coordinated schematization of actions in the context of a complex and dynamically transforming reality. This leads to the increasing importance of the role of the expert scientific community of culturologists, who provide conceptual categorization and translation of perceptual and empirical data to the logical and conceptual level based on modern methodological principles of research, as well as interpretation that is inextricably present in the unfolding of meanings and the perception of institutional and everyday events. This justification is relevant and in demand in the situation of openness and permanent incompleteness of cultural and civilizational changes, plurality of cultures and socio-cultural diversity, since it is aimed at coordinating conceptual constants and value orientations discursively transmitted by different subjects of cultural policy. Revealing the ambivalence of discourses that focus both on the development and modernization, and the revitalization of archaism, on mythologization, the author speaks about the retention of the value-semantic core and the integrity of culture, which allows for alternative design practices and helps to overcome information pressure factors and reduce the risks of digital coding of public consciousness.

For the first time, the article offers a systematization of the factors accompanying the process of making managerial decisions that affect the state of culture in society. Critical and reflexive thinking of culturologists provides a high level of expertise and conceptualization of discourses of cultural policy. The article raises the question of the expanding prospects for the inclusion of discourses of various subjects of cultural policy in the digital environment and the space of mass media.

Trends related to the development of digital technologies and their impact on the social and humanitarian sphere continue to be relevant. The emergence of digital networks not only leads to the expansion of social connections, but also forms the trend of transformation of digital networks into augmented reality, which displaces the living space of nature from the lives of young generations. Deepening of the transformations carries certain risks, since it becomes a source of generating cyber reality, an environment of unpredictable communications. It escapes attention that techno-networks, created initially for the transmission of formalized information flows, are beginning to be mastered by a person for a new type of resources as a space of intersubjective communication. As a result, due to the lack of the necessary cultural field, a qualitatively different, surrogate interaction develops. Under these conditions, the simplest communication models are implemented, based solely on the personal psychological experience of each of the participants, who hide in the digital world from the complexities of real life. For a modern person, the web becomes a space of illusory openness, a zone of serious risks and qualitative changes. The article examines how quickly each member of society gets involved in the new, digital format of interaction and hi-tech communications, and how this practice determines the person’s perception of the world, their cognitive activity. Essentially, it is necessary to clarify how the “web” or “net” space has created the prospects for the development of a real person, carrying a natural potential, and how high the psychological risks of imprinting, suggestive suppression of creative forces in the new topos of communications are. It is also important to raise the issue of formulating expert assessments of the development of networks for humans. Is it possible to consider today’s issues as a natural stage in overcoming the problems of self-realization of a person’s creative potential, or is this due to the fact that in a digital network a person develops not as an autopoetic integrity, but as a being partially prosthetic in audio-video format? Such specific activity impose restrictions on the process of cognition of the world by a person, on their worldview, and affect their independence and behavior. It is important to understand whether a human-sized network adequate to the person’s complexity is possible, and how the modern social environment, human culture, can be enriched with the network potential, new communications.

The article discusses the mechanisms of protection against infectious diseases that have been employed in Japan through ages, and the religious, social, and individual practices considered effective in the struggle with epidemics. Studying the cultural and ethnoreligious roots of Japanese attitude towards epidemics is particularly relevant these days. The coronavirus pandemic has reanimated the memory of old popular beliefs and actualized traditional, even archaic, rituals and superstitions. Alongside obvious hygienic measures going back to the Shinto rites of purifications, historically, the amplitude of responses (whether on state or local or family levels) oscillated from the ceremonies of appeasing the demons of diseases to the rituals for exorcising them.

Besides written historical sources, the main material analyzed in this article is visual: popular woodblock prints with mythological subjects, leaflets on vaccination, children’s toys representing protective characters, and apotropaic amulets. The main focus is on the materials against smallpox and cholera in the early modern period in Japan (the Edo epoch, mainly the 18th—19th centuries) and the mass reaction (not medical but resurrecting traditional superstitions) to the COVID-19 pandemic. Concerning the coronavirus, this is a new academic subject, and as for the analytical studies of visual sources on the magical reaction on epidemics during the Edo time, there are hardly any of them in Russian and quite few of them in other languages, including Japanese.

In conclusion, the author posits that along with certain real benefits (like the propaganda, albeit mythologized, for vaccination, or the practices of “self-purification” jishuku of the COVID times), the demonological approach played (and partly plays) the role of a humorous and entertaining instrument that alleviated the sense of menace and insecurity.

The article examines the borders of the subject-spatial environment in the structure of paintings and identifies their functions. The object of the study is the elements of the compositional structure in the works of Sergey Aleksandrovich Gavrilyachenko, People’s Artist of the Russian Federation, and their border markers. The article aims to show how objects with stable connotations in cultural contexts allow the artist to transmit his idea. There is noted that the images of the window, the frame, the doorway have a meaningful symbolism. The author examines several painting cycles of the artist. The threshold world is understood as the limit beyond which the time border that determines the life cycle becomes visible. The artist’s metalanguage can be seen in the functioning features of the prodigal son motif in his works “The House Is Empty. The Last Bow” (2014), “Before Your Own Unfamiliar Windows. The Prodigal Son” (2015). The article notes that the threshold can be a meeting place and a place of farewell, for example in “The Last Departure” (2013). The author explores the dual space of the painting “Major’s Marriage Proposal” (2009) through the prism of the compositional frame, which, by isolating the parts of the narrative, makes it possible to view the images of the artistic whole as independent, included in their own storyline. The article reviews the characters’ connection with metatypes containing the memory of culture. A look at the works of the artist S.A Gavrilyachenko through the prism of the border enriches the idea of the border as a phenomenon of artistic language. The observations undertaken make it possible to see how the form allows the artist to actualize his aesthetic views.

The article demonstrates the evolution of relations between V.V. Rozanov and D.V. Filosofov, on the basis of changes in their participation in the political life of Russia. The author shows the initiating role of D.V. Filosofov, as an editor, in the appearance of a number of V.V. Rozanov’s articles on aesthetic topics. Based on D.V. Filosofov’s letters, the article proves his admiration for the literary talent of V.V. Rozanov. At the same time, the critic was distinguished by his rejection of the political views advocated by the newspaper Novoye Vremya, with which V.V. Rozanov collaborated. The author notes that after the revolution of 1905, D.V. Filosofov repeatedly tried to convince V.V. Rozanov to join the active political opposition. The example of V.V. Rozanov’s assessment of D.V. Filosofov’s political role indicates a change in his own views on political events in Russia. A.P. Filosofova, D.V. Filosofov’s mother, following the interests of her son, switched to friendly relations with V.V. Rozanov and his wife V.D. Butyagina. Being a leader of the women’s social movement, A.P. Filosofova supported the Religious and Philosophical Meetings initiated by V.V. Rozanov and her son. She managed to draw V.V. Rozanov to the side of the women’s rights movement. The thinker had previously been skeptical about that trend. The image of the mother of the former admirer of his work, given in V.V. Rozanov’s articles, became one of the reasons for the rupture of relations between the writers. As a result, the memory of her as an embodied idea of innate vitalism served as the main motive for the thinker to reconcile with D.V. Filosofov at the end of his life.

In the second half of the 19th — early 20th century, the release of educational and methodical literature for piano showed significant circulation volumes and was primarily associated with the flourishing of the Russian performing school and the growing interest of the general population in the beautiful world of music. The foundation of the Imperial Russian Music Society in 1959, the opening of the St. Petersburg (1862) and Moscow (1866) conservatories largely determined the goals and objectives, as well as the repertoire concept of a number of leading Russian music publishers.

Among them, the firm “P.I. Jurgenson” took a leading position in the production of educational and methodical literature for piano, along with other well-known producers such as “M. Bernard”, “A. Gutheil” and “V.V. Bessel and Co.” The catalogues of music publishers from the collections of the Russian State Library contain information about the structure and principles of forming special sections devoted to education, about the publication activities of individual authors, and their works in the field of piano pedagogy.

Together, this material allows to create a primary idea of the volume of products intended for music schools of the country and to take cognizance that all major Russian publishing houses, with rare exceptions, collaborated with the Imperial Russian Music Society, not only in Moscow or St. Petersburg, but also in its provincial branches, honourably putting their names on the title pages of the catalogs. A characteristic feature is the issues devoted to piano literature, including playing schools, collections of exercises, pedagogical repertoire of various degrees of complexity, manuals, etc.

The scale of this professional activity was a reflection of the important evolutionary processes taking place in the Russian musical culture of the second half of the 19th — early 20th century. That period in piano art and pedagogy indicated the need to consider historical, social, economic and other contexts that create the right research tone and volume.

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.

The article analyzes the technique of watercolor in illustrations of children’s books of the 1980s—2020s by Soviet and modern Russian artists. There is traced the influence of modern technologies on children’s book illustrations made in the watercolor technique. In the context of current artistic trends, the article examines the connections of social processes and book graphics; the features of the technical development of book design; the combination of various visual materials with the technique of “watercolor” in the conditions of information technology; new technological and technical approaches; the author’s vision of an illustrated work. The main method used is the analysis of the works of Soviet and modern illustrators of children’s books: V.V. Pertsov, N.E. Popov, A.V. Kokovkin, V.G. Britvin, V.V. Pavlova, A.A. Koshkin, E.A. Silina, Ya.M. Sedova, A.A. Desnitskaya, O. Demidova, V. Pomidor, A.Ya. Lomaev. The relevance of this topic is determined by the intensive introduction of digital technologies into book art and the transformation of the traditional watercolor technique, and the topic’s novelty is based on the lack of formulation of the mentioned issues in the context of children’s book watercolor illustration. Modern technologies make it possible to implement any creative idea of the artist, who, being able to freely interpret the literary work, is now an active participant in the creation of a book image. Absence of censorship imposes a certain responsibility for the quality of illustrations on the artist, since it affects the perception of the child. Thus, forming the aesthetic taste of the younger generation, the artist becomes a participant in the educational process.

The analysis of the watercolor illustration showed that the artist is faced with a difficult task, which is associated not only with the ability to use technological and technical innovations, understand the principle of modern computer programs, reinforce the visual series with knowledge of the historical context, but also to know and understand how children’s consciousness works and how to instill good taste in a child.

The author examines the differences in the interpretation of historical events in the cinematography of the two opposing sides — Palestine and Israel, and the ways of forming a particular point of view by means of dramaturgy. This subject is relevant in the light of the growing information confrontation between different states, as well as political and social movements. The article analyzes the event context of the creation of Israel as a state in the view of Israeli and Palestinian filmmakers. The author considers samples of Israeli and Palestinian film production — feature films and documentaries, television series that reflect the transfer of Palestinian territory to the Israelis in 1948. The day of the Arabs’ exodus from Palestine in 1948 is considered tragic for the Palestinians and is known among them as “Nakba” (catastrophe, cataclysm), but at the same time it is the Independence Day for the Jews of Israel.

The article demonstrates what plot devices and narrative techniques are used by directors to emphasize aspects of historical events that are beneficial to them, using cinematography as an instrument of ideological confrontation between the two peoples who have claims to the same land. Trying to have an impartial take, without siding with either of the conflicting parties, the author focuses exclusively on studying the means used by the creators of the films considered. This article can be useful for art historians, culturologists and sociologists dealing with issues of the Middle East, as well as for humanitarians whose research interests include theoretical understanding of ideology and propaganda without reference to specific epochs and regions (territories).

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