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James Conlon | The Great Mosque of Djenne, South façade, exterior | image: 2008 | Djenne, Mali

Mrs. Michelle Apotsos
Stanford University
Doctoral candidate Art History/Architectural History

As a graduate student at Tufts University, I was once given the opportunity to give a lecture to a class of architectural history students on West African architectural form for the purpose of unsettling some common notions that inform Western conceptions of the built environment. I decided to present a case study of the Djenné mosque in Mali, West Africa as an example of an architectural tradition that utilizes distinctive structures, materials, and iconographies to resonate with its cultural context. The experience itself not only revealed to me the inherent challenges of teaching architectural studies in Africa, but also the necessity of having high-quality visual tools in order to recreate a convincing three-dimensional spatial narrative. Thus began my ongoing love affair with Artstor.

Alex Katz | Home On the Range, 1948-1949 | Colby College Museum of Art | Art © Alex Katz / Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY. This work of art is protected by copyright and/or related rights and may not be reproduced in any manner, except as permitted under the Artstor Digital Library Terms and Conditions of Use, without the prior express written authorization of VAGA, 350 Fifth Avenue, Suite 2820, New York, NY 10118. Tel.: 212-736-6666; Fax: 212-736-6767; Email: info@vagarights.com.

Alex Katz, one of the most distinctive painters in America, turned 85 years old this week. His style is now immediately recognizable: flat, minimal, large, and—usually—bright. While Katz has tackled a variety of subjects and media in his long career, his work has retained many of the same qualities since his first solo exhibition in 1954, which is why this selection from his student years at Cooper Union proves so fascinating.

These small gouaches on paper from 1948-1949 illustrating popular folk songs offer a glimpse of the artist in development. Many of the elements that would become Katz’s signature style are already in place, but we find unexpected hints of influence by American painters Ben Shahn and Stuart Davis.

Alex Katz | As I Went A-Walking One Fine Summer's Evening, 1948-1949 | Colby College Museum of Art | Art © Alex Katz / Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY. This work of art is protected by copyright and/or related rights and may not be reproduced in any manner, except as permitted under the ARTstor Digital Library Terms and Conditions of Use, without the prior express written authorization of VAGA, 350 Fifth Avenue, Suite 2820, New York, NY 10118. Tel.: 212-736-6666; Fax: 212-736-6767; Email: info@vagarights.com.

Alex Katz | Frankie and Johnny, 1948-1949 | Colby College Museum of Art | Art © Alex Katz / Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY. This work of art is protected by copyright and/or related rights and may not be reproduced in any manner, except as permitted under the ARTstor Digital Library Terms and Conditions of Use, without the prior express written authorization of VAGA, 350 Fifth Avenue, Suite 2820, New York, NY 10118. Tel.: 212-736-6666; Fax: 212-736-6767; Email: info@vagarights.com.

Alex Katz | What Shall We Do with a Drunken Sailor? , 1948-1949 | Colby College Museum of Art | Art © Alex Katz / Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY. This work of art is protected by copyright and/or related rights and may not be reproduced in any manner, except as permitted under the ARTstor Digital Library Terms and Conditions of Use, without the prior express written authorization of VAGA, 350 Fifth Avenue, Suite 2820, New York, NY 10118. Tel.: 212-736-6666; Fax: 212-736-6767; Email: info@vagarights.com.

Alex Katz | Home On the Range, 1948-1949 | Colby College Museum of Art | Art © Alex Katz / Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY. This work of art is protected by copyright and/or related rights and may not be reproduced in any manner, except as permitted under the ARTstor Digital Library Terms and Conditions of Use, without the prior express written authorization of VAGA, 350 Fifth Avenue, Suite 2820, New York, NY 10118. Tel.: 212-736-6666; Fax: 212-736-6767; Email: info@vagarights.com.

Not long after finishing these works, Katz began painting from life during a summer at the Skowhegan School for Painting and Sculpture in Maine, adding one more of the key elements that led to his mature work.

These images—from a series of nine gouaches—come to us from the collection of the Colby College Museum of Art in Waterville, Maine. Since 1954, Katz has spent his summers in a 19th-century clapboard farmhouse in neighboring Lincolnville, and he has developed a close relationship with the school, which has devoted a 10,000-square-foot wing to his work, of which they own more than 760 pieces, most of them accessible in the Artstor Digital Library.

–  Giovanni Garcia-Fenech

John Adams Whipple | The Moon, 1857 – 1860 | The Metropolitan Museum of Art | Image © The Metropolitan Museum of Art

The first manned mission to land on the Moon touched down on July 20, 1969. Upon arrival, Commander Neil A. Armstrong famously reported, “The Eagle has landed.” The next day he would be the first human to walk upon the Moon’s surface, the capstone of mankind’s fascination with the satellite.

Enjoy this slide show featuring an early photograph of the Moon, Caspar David Friedrich’s Romanticist landscape, a Nepalese mandala of Chandra, god of the Moon, all courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art; Yamamoto Baiitsu’s painting of the Moon and waves from the Philadelphia Museum of Art Collection; and an Iranian manuscript illumination featuring the angel Israfil holding the Moon from the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

The Angel Israfil Holding the Moon, two manuscript leaves of Qazvini's Ajaibal Mahhluqat, 16th century | Iran | Museum of Fine Arts, Boston | Image and data from: Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

John Adams Whipple | The Moon, 1857 – 1860 | The Metropolitan Museum of Art | Image © The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Yamamoto Baiitsu | Waves and Moon, Early 19th century | Philadelphia Museum of Art | Image and data from: Philadelphia Museum of Art

Mandala of Chandra, God of the Moon, late 14th-early 15th century | Nepal |The Metropolitan Museum of Art | Image © The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Caspar David Friedrich | Two Men Contemplating the Moon, ca. 1830 | The Metropolitan Museum of Art | Image © The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Want to see more? Do an advanced search in the Artstor Digital Library for Moon in the Title field to find more than 1,000 results in many media from ancient times to the present. Be sure not to miss Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s irreverent painting, too racy for the Artstor Blog!

Edgar Degas | Arabesque over the right leg, left arm in line, 1882-1895 | yellow-brown wax | Photograph by Gauthier| Musee d’Orsay, Paris, France | Image and original data provided by Réunion des Musées Nationaux / Art Resource, N.Y. artres.com

Edgar Degas is primarily known for his painting, having exhibited only one sculpture during his lifetime: The Little Fourteen-Year-Old Dancer, shown in the sixth Impressionist exhibition in Paris in 1881. It was not until after his death in 1917 that more than 150 pieces of sculpture of dancers, horses, and nudes, mostly made of wax, clay, and plastiline (a type of modeling clay), were discovered in his studio (read the intriguing story of the posthumous castings on the Metropolitan Museum of Art website).

Edgar Degas | Horse galloping on right foot, 1865-1881| brown wax; pieces of cork in the base | Photographer: Hervé Lewandowski | Musee d'Orsay, Paris, France | Image and original data provided by Réunion des Musées Nationaux / Art Resource, N.Y. artres.com

Edgar Degas | Dressed dancer at rest, hands behind her back, right leg forward, 1896-1911 | brown wax | Photograph by Gauthier| Musee d'Orsay, Paris, France | Image and original data provided by Réunion des Musées Nationaux / Art Resource, N.Y. artres.com

Edgar Degas | Arabesque over the right leg, left arm in line, 1882-1895 | yellow-brown wax | Photograph by Gauthier| Musee d'Orsay, Paris, France | Image and original data provided by Réunion des Musées Nationaux / Art Resource, N.Y. artres.com

Edgar Degas | Woman washing her left leg, 1896-1911 | yellow and red wax; the 'basin' is a small pot of green porcelain | Photograph by Gauthier | Musee d'Orsay, Paris, France | Image and original data provided by Réunion des Musées Nationaux / Art Resource, N.Y. artres.com

Edgar Degas | Dancer putting on her stocking, 1896-1911 | brown wax, pieces of wire wound around the lifted foot | Photograph by Gauthier | Musee d'Orsay, Paris, France | Image and original data provided by Réunion des Musées Nationaux / Art Resource, N.Y. artres.com

Edgar Degas | Grande arabesque, first time, 1882-1895 | green wax | Photograph by Gauthier | Musee d'Orsay, Paris, France | Image and original data provided by Réunion des Musées Nationaux / Art Resource, N.Y. artres.com

Arnold Genthe | Miss Helen Chamberlain with Buzzer the cat, May 28, 1918 | Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division

“It is told that at the age of four, when I was taken by the nurse to look at my newly arrived brother Hugo, I seriously remarked, ‘I’d like a little kitten better.’ I am fond of dogs, but cats have always meant more to me, and they have been the wise and sympathetic companions of many a solitary hour.”

 –Arnold Genthe, As I Remember (1936)

Arnold Genthe is best remembered for his photos of San Francisco’s Chinatown, the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake, and his portraits of notables, from celebrities to politicians. Maybe that list should also include cats.

A self-taught photographer, Genthe opened a portrait studio in San Francisco in the late 1890s. His clientele grew to include personages like silent actress Nance O’Neil, theater legend Sarah Bernhardt, poet Nora May French, and author Jack London. In 1911 Genthe moved to New York City, where he concentrated primarily on portraiture, photographing such towering figures as Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, and John D. Rockefeller. And all the while, he was photographing cats. Among the more than 1,000 images of Genthe’s photographs in the Library of Congress Collection in the Artstor Digital Library, there are 82 that include cats, usually accompanying women, but occasionally alone. More than half of these feature his beloved cat Buzzer (or perhaps that should be “Buzzers,” as he used that name for four cats).

Arnold Genthe | Miss Helen Chamberlain with Buzzer the cat, May 28, 1918 | Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division

Arnold Genthe | Silvester child with Buzzer the cat, March 3, 1913 | Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division

Arnold Genthe. Miss Natalie Campbell with Buzzer the cat, December 24, 1914. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division

Arnold Genthe |Miss Pell with Buzzer the cat, April 11, 1916 | Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division

Arnold Genthe | Miss M. Liebert with Buzzer the cat, between 1916 and 1927 | Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division

Arnold Genthe | Mrs. Bernice Ballard with Buzzer the cat, May 19, 1916 | Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division

Arnold Genthe | Miss Fay Bainter with Buzzer the cat, 1916 | Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division

Arnold Genthe | Buzzer the cat, 1912 | Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division

Our slide show is made up of some highlights featuring Buzzer; search the Artstor Digital Library for Genthe and cat to see all of the photographer’s feline friends.

–  Giovanni Garcia-Fenech

Arnold Genthe | Buzzer the cat, 1912 | Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division

Congratulations to the five winners of this year’s Artstor Travel Awards! They will each receive $1,500 to be used for their teaching and research travel needs over the course of the next year. The winning essays are:

• Susan Dodge-Peters Daiss, Memorial Art Gallery of University of Rochester: Art at the Bedside: Research on the Healing Potential of the Visual Arts
• Dr. Martha Hollander, Hofstra University: Vermeer’s Robe: The Dutch and Japan, 1600-1800
• Katherine Murrell, Milwaukee Institute of Art & Design: REPRESENT: Women Artists in the Western Tradition
• Amelia Nelson, Kansas City Art Institute: Silkworms in the Library
• Margaret Teillon, Wachovia Education Resource Center, Philadelphia Museum of Art: Enhancing Children’s Literature with Artstor Images

Jacob Lawrence | The migration gained in momentum, 1940-41| Image and original data provided by The Museum of Modern Art | © 2008 Estate of Gwendolyn Knight Lawrence / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Margaret Teillon
Volunteer educator
Wachovia Education Resource Center, Philadelphia Museum of Art

From a very early age children love to read, be read to, and look at pictures in books. Recognizing the joy children bring to picture books, I have developed teaching materials using selected children’s literature combined with Artstor images. My goal is to enhance literacy instruction and provide an interdisciplinary method of teaching social studies, language arts, and art appreciation. For the youngest students, I have enhanced books such as Goodnight Moon by Margaret Wise Brown; and for elementary students have developed images for Martin’s Big Words by Doreen Rappaport. Included in each enhanced book is an OIV presentation and image palette with accompanying quotes from the text, and Web links to additional creative lessons. Teachers and homeschool educators have borrowed these materials for their own students.

Unknown; Chinese | Taoist Priest’s Robe, c. 1850-1900 | Philadelphia Museum of Art | Image and data from the Philadelphia Museum of Art

Amelia Nelson
Cataloging and Digital Services Librarian
Kansas City Art Institute

In the spring semester the library collaborated with the Fibers Department by hosting 500 growing silkworms in one of the display cases at the library entrance. The worms were grown as part of the course “Fiber History and Properties.” The silkworms’ development was tracked by students visiting the library and through a live feed broadcast on the library’s ustream channel. Playing host to these silkworms was a fun opportunity for the library to connect with students and to highlight some of the plethora of library resources available to fibers students. Some of these representative resources were compiled into a LibGuide. The guide incorporated the live feed of the growing silkworms and linked to fibers resources across the collection including an image group compiled from the Artstor Digital Library.

The Artstor image group complemented our physical collection and also provided unique imagery documenting the history of the silkworm industry and examples of silk used across cultures and throughout history. These images range from an 8th-century Caftan from the Caucasus Mountains to Grace Kelly’s silk tulle wedding gown. Each image provides unique high-quality image resolution especially usefully for fiber students. In the Caftan image, for example, students are able to zoom into the image to see repairs, the texture of the plain weave linen, and the faded silk decorative border. For a tactile fiber student, these detailed views provide insight into the construction, texture and materials—details that couldn’t be extrapolated from other images.

Unknown; Chinese | Taoist Priest's Robe, c. 1850-1900 | Philadelphia Museum of Art | Image and data from the Philadelphia Museum of Art

Russian; Unknown | Dress, first half 19th century |Image © The Metropolitan Museum of Art | Image and original data from the Brooklyn Museum.

Emperor Huizong | Court Ladies Preparing Newly Woven Silk, early 12th Century | Museum of Fine Arts, Boston | Image and data from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Asian; artist unknown | Silkworm, 206 B.C. - A.D. 220 |The Minneapolis Institute of Arts | Image and data from The Minneapolis Institute of Arts

British | Mantua or court dress, 1740 - 1745 | Victoria and Albert Museum | Image and data from the Victoria and Albert Museum

This sample image group can be arranged chronologically, allowing users to compare the weaves of different silk textiles and to track the evolution of this fabric through time. Viewed together, this image group illustrates the important cultural, symbolic, and artistic role this luxurious fabric has held throughout its history, included in everything from tapestries to a 16th-century Emperor’s court robe to silk slippers from the 18th century. The images in this group perfectly dovetailed into the goal of the fibers LibGuide to build a bridge from the excitement and curiosity about the silkworms on display to the library’s rich collection of fiber resources.

Judy Chicago | The Dinner Party, 1974-1979 | © Judy Chicago Photo © Donald Woodman | © 2008 Judy Chicago / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Katherine Murrell
Instructor of Art History
Milwaukee Institute of Art & Design

In my class on women artists from the medieval period onward, one of the first activities students were asked to do was to work in small groups and write a list of ten female painters or sculptors active before 1950, but without looking for information online. Many minutes elapsed, and the group with the longest list only had eight names. It was a sobering realization that despite the hundreds of female practitioners of art, relatively few are commonly known. This oversight is apparent on many websites hosting libraries of images, but Artstor is a notable and praiseworthy exception.

The tools available on Artstor make researching and organizing presentations a streamlined delight, but the breadth and depth of its visual resources make it an outstanding library. The nearly 400 images from artist Judy Chicago are an exceptional example of this. Chicago’s landmark work, The Dinner Party, is widely represented in art history survey textbooks, and was a touchstone for our class. The studio photographs and other documentary images associated with the piece, and detailed images of various place settings, help vividly illustrate the scope of this collaborative and historic work.

Context of a smaller, older work was explored through the 12th-century image of Hildegard von Bingen, experiencing a vision like a fiery flame. This is another picture often shown in survey textbooks, but the Artstor collection includes the facsimile page from her Liber Scivias, showing the illustration as accompanying its text, in addition to many other richly illustrated folios.

Artists of significant accomplishment such as Sofonisba Anguissola, Lavinia Fontana, Artemisia Gentileschi, and many others, are represented with plentiful images. The extensive material offers valuable opportunities for examining recurring subjects of interest, such as the Jewish heroine Judith. Artists’ self-portraits are another significant  topic for discussion. Angelica Kauffman, a founding member of London’s Royal Academy of Art, created an eloquent self-portrait where she chooses between her loves of art and music, an image that still makes a powerful statement today about professional commitment.

Judy Chicago. The Dinner Party, 1974-1979. © Judy Chicago Photo © Donald Woodman. © 2008 Judy Chicago / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Mary Stevenson Cassatt | Woman with a Pearl Necklace in a Loge, 1879 | Philadelphia Museum of Art| Image and data from the Philadelphia Museum of Art

Judith Leyster | Merry Company, 1630 | Musée du Louvre | Image and original data provided by Erich Lessing Culture and Fine Arts Archives/ART RESOURCE, N.Y. artres.com

Designed by: Kitagawa Utamaro | Midnight: Mother and Sleepy Child, 1790 | The Metropolitan Museum of Art | Image © The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Artemisia Gentileschi | Judith and Her Maidservant, c. 1612 | Galleria Palatina | Image and original data provided by SCALA, Florence/ART RESOURCE, N.Y. | artres.com , scalarchives.com | (c) 2006, SCALA, Florence / ART RESOURCE, N.Y.

Resources concerning the life and career of Rosa Bonheur include numerous paintings, studies, sketches, and photographs. Of particular note in the Artstor collection is a permit for which she regularly applied to French authorities to wear men’s clothing in public, in order to gain easier access to male-dominated settings not readily open to women.

The quantity of images for many artists is impressive, but also the details and installation views of works.  The story quilts of Faith Ringgold come alive with close-ups of image and text, and the monumental scale of Louise Bourgeois’ spiders are all the more impressive for the exhibition images.

While putting together my course, Artstor has been an invaluable partner, providing numerous images and source documents, and helping my students gain an expansive sense of the contributions of women artists in the present and past centuries. The field of art history, and the experience in the classroom, is undeniable richer for this resource.

Jan Vermeer | The Astronomer, 1668 | The Astronomer | Image and original data provided by Erich Lessing Culture and Fine Arts Archives/ART RESOURCE, N.Y | artres.com artres.com

Dr. Martha Hollander
Professor
Hofstra University

My research and teaching in art history has always focused on the ways in which a single work of art can open up an entire world of knowledge, making vivid and real the otherwise rather bland term “historical context.” For the past few years I have been working on a study of men’s fashions in the seventeenth century and their representations in Dutch art. This has involved making a number of image groups in Artstor where I connect visual art, textiles, and clothing accessories.

One project that has proved particularly rich culminated in a recently published article called “Vermeer’s Robe: Costume, Commerce and Fantasy in the Early Modern Netherlands.” It concerns the japonsche rok, the Japanese silk robe portrayed most famously in Vermeer’s The Astronomer and The Geographer.

These rare spoils of Asian trade were first presented annually by Japanese shoguns to officials of the Dutch east India Company (VOC) and thereafter were made available as Western copies. By the end of the seventeenth century, similar robes made of chintz or batik, also known as banyans, were imported from India and went through the same transformation to domestic product. All of these long, loose garments possessed a novelty and cachet unmatched by more abundant imports such as spices, lacquer, porcelain, and precious metals. They appear in portraits of eminent and wealthy men, as well as in fictionalized genre images of scholars and scientists. Collectively, these garments created an idealized costume of social and intellectual prestige. Behind it are the interactions among the forces of class, fashion, fantasy, exoticism, and, above all, the extraordinary taste-making power of the VOC.

Jan Vermeer | The Astronomer, 1668 | The Astronomer | Image and original data provided by Erich Lessing Culture and Fine Arts Archives/ART RESOURCE, N.Y | artres.com artres.com

Ludolf Backhuysen I Ships of the Dutch East India Company (Escadre Neerlandaise de la Compagnie des Indes), 1675 | Musée du Louvre | Image and original data provided by Réunion des Musées Nationaux / Art Resource, N.Y.

Islamic | Robe; court, 17th century | The Metropolitan Museum of Art | Image © The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Katsushika Hokusai | Woman Spinning Silk, 18th century |The Metropolitan Museum of Art | Image © The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Japan | Formal Robe for Daimyo's Wife with Design of Wisteria and Peonies, 18th century | The Metropolitan Museum of Art | Image © The Metropolitan Museum of Art

At the same time, Irt am currently teaching two courses – a survey course in baroque and rococo art, and another on east-west relations as expressed in art and artifacts. Artstor image groups create an ideal means of incorporating my research into both classrooms.

Students can, for example, start with a portrait or genre scene, focus on a particular piece of clothing or accessory, then create a study group. Conversely, they can choose types of artifact, e.g., a fan, a shoe, a dress, a chair, a ship, a navigational instrument, or a map, and build a series of artworks around them to show how they were used. Artstor image groups can enhance students’ experience of art history by giving them the tools to create their own interdisciplinary and cross-cultural bodies of knowledge.

Some search topics:

• Portraits of important men and women: aspirational clothing
• Genre images of scholars and scientists: idealized/stereotyping clothing
• Asian representations of Dutch and English traders
• Sericulture in Japan
• Indian textiles, showing both native patterns and later patterns “westernized” for export back to Europe
• European-made textiles and clothing based on Asian designs
• Ships, maps, and instruments: the technology behind the textile trade