'ORLAN' is a study of ORLAN's pioneering art. The book covers her entire career in performance and a range of other art forms. It describes and analyses her various innovative uses of the body as artistic material.

The French artist Orlan is infamous for performances during which her body is surgically altered. In nine such performance surgeries, features from Greek goddesses painted by Botticelli, Gerard, Moreau, and an anonymous School of Fontainebleau artist, as well as from da Vinci's "Mona Lisa, were implanted into Orlan's face. During her surgical performances, viewers witness a material tampering with the relationship between the face and individual identity, the original and the constructed, a historical critique of the association of art with beauty and the female body. Responding to Orlan's definition of her performance surgeries as "carnal art," C. Jill O'Bryan considers how the artist's ever-fluctuating reconstructions of her face question idealized beauty and female identity, persuasively arguing that Orlan's surgically reinvented face succeeds in both reinforcing and breaking apart corporeal subjectivity and representation. O'Bryan contextualizes Orlan's operations within the centuries-long history of public dissections and surgeries, lavish anatomical illustrations created to draw the gaze into the opened anatomy, Artaud's "Theater of Cruelty" in the early twentieth century, and contemporary works and performances by Cindy Sherman, Hans Bellman, and Annie Sprinkle. A compelling blurring of the line between feminist theory and art criticism, O'Bryan's close examination of Orlan's performance surgeries complicates and reconfigures the notions of identity--and its relation to the body--at the very boundary dividing art from identity.

ORLAN: A Hybrid Body of Artworks is an in-depth academic account of ORLAN's pioneering art in its entirety. The book covers her career in performance and a range of other art forms. This single accessible overview of ORLAN's practices describes and analyses her various innovative uses of the body as artistic material. Edited by Simon Donger with Simon Shepherd and ORLAN herself, the collection highlights her artistic impact from the perspectives of both performance and visual cultures. The book features: vintage texts by ORLAN and on ORLAN's work, including manifestos, key writings and critical studies ten new contributions, responses and interviews by leading international specialists on performance and visual arts over fifty images demonstrating ORLAN's art, with thirty full colour pictures a new essay by ORLAN, written specially for this volume a new bibliography of writing on ORLAN an indexed listing of ORLAN’s artworks and key themes.

This is the first major study in English of the work of the French novelist, essayist, journalist, poet and ‘chansonnier’ Pierre Mac Orlan (1882-1970). It assesses Mac Orlan's contribution to the post-1918 phenomenon of intellectual disillusionment and disorientation which was termed the ‘nouveau mal du siècle’, or ‘inquiétude’. Although he has largely been ignored by critics thus far, Mac Orlan was part of mainstream French literary production and a major exponent of ‘inquiétude’. Where he differs from his contemporaries is in his subject matter, in his use of sociological, rather than abstract, intellectual material. His expression of ‘inquiétude’ encompasses: ‘le fantastique social’; adventure; marginality; ‘le cafard’; and sadistic sexuality. His originality lies in his invention of ‘le fantastique social’, in his constant use of certain techniques, as well as the subject matter, of German Expressionism via the depiction of the disturbing landscape of the modern city, post-1918 inflation and decadence, prostitutes and criminals, doomed adventurers, the mystery of modern technology, and in the expression of a morbid interest in sexual violence. This volume will be of particular interest to students of inter-war French literature and thought.

Orlan is one of the most challenging and thought-provoking artists working today. Born in France in 1947, she began her highly unconventional career at the age of 17 with a series of works including staged photographs of her own body, which has become the characteristic expression of her creative voice.

Few tales of artistic triumph can rival the story of Zeuxis. As first reported by Cicero and Pliny, the painter Zeuxis set out to portray Helen of Troy, but when he realized that a single model could not match Helen’s beauty, he combined the best features of five different models. A primer on mimesis in art making, the Zeuxis myth also illustrates ambivalence about the ability to rely on nature as a model for ideal form. In Too Beautiful to Picture, Elizabeth C. Mansfield engages the visual arts, literature, and performance to examine the desire to make the ideal visible. She finds in the Zeuxis myth evidence of a cultural primal scene that manifests itself in gendered terms. Mansfield considers the many depictions of the legend during the Renaissance and questions its absence during the eighteenth century. Offering interpretations of Angelica Kauffman’s paintings, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, and Picasso’s Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, Mansfield also considers Orlan’s carnal art as a profound retelling of the myth. Throughout, Mansfield asserts that the Zeuxis legend encodes an unconscious record of the West’s reliance on mimetic representation as a vehicle for metaphysical solace. Elizabeth C. Mansfield is associate professor of art history at the University of the South.

Allan B. Fredrickson’s grandparents, Nels and Augusta Larson, raised eighteen children on their homestead in the Turtle Mountains in northern North Dakota. Of the eight boys, six of them farmed in the area near Lake Metigoshe, north of Bottineau. Allan spent his summers working on their farms with most of his time working for his uncle Orlando (known as Orlan). Shortly after receiving his doctor’s degree in veterinary medicine from the University of Minnesota, he and his wife, Barbara, signed on as an associate with a veterinarian in Mount Vernon, Washington, where they reside to this day. ***** Nels and Augusta Larson had a 160-acre farm, and on it was a small clapboard house, a straw pole barn, a wooden grain bin, and a log chicken coop. The house had two rooms upstairs, which served as a bedroom for the ten girls and one for the eight boys. Their clothes were stored in open wooden boxes. Nels had a string of milk cows, beef cattle, and a few sheep and farmed with two teams of draft horses. ***** Orlan grew up knowing he would always be a dirt farmer and cattle rancher. After two divorces, he lost everything he owned or wanted and fell into a modest career of training and racing standardbred harness horses in California and Arizona. He lost contact with most of his family and died a lonely, broken-down man. 1

A young wizard is forced to leave his home because no one wanted him. He starts his journey to find a master wizard who is hard to find to finish his training so that he may once again return to his village, but he meets a young curious dragon by accident when a spell goes wrong. He discovers that he just may be able to help the dragons save their families in their world by giving them the chance to talk through many trials and finally being accepted for who he is.

Few arguments in biomedical experimentation have stirred such heated debate in recent years as those raised by animal research. In this comprehensive analysis of the social, political, and ethical conflicts surrounding the use of animals in scientific experiments, Barbara Orlans judges both ends of the spectrum in this debate -- unconditional approval or rejection of animal experimentation -- to be untenable. Instead of arguing for either view, she thoughtfully explores the ground between the extremes, and convincingly makes the case for public policy reforms that serve to improve the welfare of laboratory animals without jeopardizing scientific endeavor. This book presents controversial issues in a balanced manner based on careful historical analysis and original research. Different mechanisms of oversight for animal experiments are compared and those that have worked well are identified. This compelling work will be of interest to biomedical scientists, ethicists, animal welfare advocates and other readers concerned with this critical issue.