Blog

Beadnet dress. Egyptian. c 2551-2528 BC. Image © Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

Estate Figure. Egyptian. c. 1981-1975 BC. Image and data courtesy the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Norman Norell. Evening dress. c. 1963. Image and original data from the Brooklyn Museum. Image © The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Caryatid of the Canopus. Roman. c. 420 - 413 BCE. Image and original data provided by SCALA, Florence/ART RESOURCE, N.Y.

Madame Alix Grès. Evening dress. 1937. Image and original data from the Brooklyn Museum. Image © The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

It may come as a surprise that JSTOR is flush with fashion. For a dose of glamour, how about a stroll down the red carpet, exploring designs through the ages?

Let’s begin with the ancients: In early dynastic Egypt, the beadnet sheath dress is often depicted in paintings and statuary. A faience (sintered-quartz ceramic) dress from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, reconstructed from thousands of beads found in a burial site, is our oldest surviving example from approximately 2551–2528 BC (this particular garment was used to dress a mummy). In life, these decorative nets were probably worn over plain linen sheaths, giving an effect that approximates the elegant lines of a deftly carved offering figure from the tomb of Meketre (c. 1981-1975 BCE). A similar silhouette is achieved five millenia later in an evening gown by the pioneering American designer Norman Norell through the layering of a peach satin under slip and black rhinestone beaded netting (c. 1963).

In the summer of 1675, Madame de Sévigné, a doyenne of letters, protested from Paris: “It is horribly cold… we think the behaviour of the sun and of the seasons has changed,” prescient witness to the phenomenon now referred to as the Little Ice Age. Over the last century, scientists and historians have gathered evidence of a prolonged period of global climatic volatility from the thirteenth to the mid-nineteenth centuries, culminating in a cooling trend in Northern Europe during the 1600s — frigid winters and wet, cold summers. As we bear our share of winter hardships, it might be comforting to gain some historical and pictorial perspective on the polar vortex.

Andy Warhol. Car. Ink and Dr. Martin’s Aniline Dye on Strathmore paper. Artwork and Image © The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc.

Thanks to an additional contribution from The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, we are now able to present a fuller picture of the artist’s early career in New York City. 

Bob Gore. Woman with gourd, Kwanzaa celebration. 2006. Image and data provided by Bob Gore.

Our thanks to New York photographer Bob Gore, who contributed approximately 300 images from his portfolio to JSTOR, documenting diverse expressions of faith across the United States and in the Caribbean region.*

Roger Brown. Thumbing in Fall. 1985. Oil on canvas. Image and data provided by the Roger Brown Study Collection, School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Our thanks to the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC), which contributed the Roger Brown Study Collection, over 800 images of the artist’s work, to the JSTOR Digital Library. The collection encompasses the artist’s career, from 1970 through 1997, and includes paintings, mosaics, and mixed media.

Pacita Abad. Assaulting the eye with ecstasy. 1986. Acrylic, embroidery, buttons, mirrors on stitched and padded canvas. Image and data provided by © Pacita Abad Art Estate

Our thanks to the Pacita Abad Art Estate, which contributed 500 images of the artist’s work to the Artstor Digital Library.* The selection in Artstor illustrates the artist’s career from the 1970s to her final years in the 2000s.

Andy Warhol, Dog, 1982. Artwork and Image © The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc.

Andy Warhol, Dog, undated. Artwork and Image © The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc.

Andy Warhol, Dog, undated. Artwork and Image © The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc.

Andy Warhol, Dog, undated. Artwork and Image © The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc.

Andy Warhol, Dog, undated. Artwork and Image © The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc.

Andy Warhol, Dog, undated. Artwork and Image © The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc.

When you see Andy Warhol’s name, his Pop Art paintings of Marilyn Monroe, Elvis Presley, and Campbell’s soup cans probably spring to mind. But Warhol’s interests extended beyond fame and commerce, as evidenced in the photos he took to record his daily life. “A picture means I know where I was every minute,” the artist said. “That’s why I take pictures. It’s a visual Diary.”

Bartolomeo Bimbi. Pears. 1699. Oil on canvas. Villa Medicea. Image and data provided by SCALA, Florence/ART RESOURCE, N.Y.

Every year the subject of food rises in our thoughts and comes into greater and more glorious focus as we are swept up in a wave of planning, preparation, and consumption for the holidays. In anticipation and celebration of our sumptuous banquets and stolen treats, Artstor offers a feast of foodie still lifes. Think of this selection as an appetizer: with heaping mounds of fruit, Bartolomeo Bimbi’s monumental Pears (1699) heralds the abundant extreme of the genre.

Erich Salomon. The American newspaper publisher William Randolph Hearst reading telegraphs in his castle “La Cuesta Encantada,” San Simeon, CA. 1930. Silver gelatin photograph. Licensed under CC0

The William Randolph Hearst Archive has contributed a collection of 2,050 images to Artstor, providing an intriguing perspective on the collecting passions of Hearst, the man best known to us as a newspaper baron, and notoriously immortalized on film as the unscrupulous “Citizen Kane.”

James Winthrop. Egyptian hieroglyphics, from public monuments extracted from Denon. Late 18th or early 19th century. Image and data courtesy Allegheny College Library Special Collections.

The Allegheny College Egyptian Hieroglyphics collection features every page of a single manuscript in the James Winthrop Collection. The collection includes approximately 3,000 titles from the libraries of Winthrop and his father, John Winthrop, who was Hollis Professor of Natural Philosophy and Mathematics at Harvard. This particular manuscript is in the public domain, and Allegheny has shared this digital reproduction as a Public Collection in Artstor so that anyone can view and download the images.