Click on the four-way arrow in the bottom right-hand corner of the slideshow to convert into full-screen mode.

Spanning the fifteenth through the nineteenth centuries, the Ransom Center’s European popular imagery collection is now fully accessible online via two sources: the Center’s finding aid and ARTstor’s nonprofit digital library.

The Ransom Center’s online finding aid includes descriptive text derived from collector’s notes and a lengthy subject index. Each record in the finding aid also includes a link to the related image. ARTstor’s digital library provides advanced search functions and the ability to group selected images for PowerPoint display in classrooms, with images at high resolution.

The invention of the printing press in the fifteenth century and the resultant cultural phenomenon called “Popular Imagery” is a perfect example of cause and effect. Like printed words, unlimited reproductions of images helped bring about the development of a new visual language in early European society and a burgeoning cultural renaissance. The broad scope of the collection, whose origins include nine European countries, illustrate this fact. Prints make up the bulk of the popular imagery collection, with 686 intaglios (including 17 mezzotints), 115 woodcuts, one wood engraving, and six lithographs. Researchers will find an abundance of subjects, from political satire on kings, rulers, revolution, and war to social satire on gender, marriage, and domestic life; from religious studies and their allegorical themes on vice and virtue to numerous motifs on “The Ages of Man,” and “The Dance Macabre” or “Dance of Death.” Great moments in science and technology are visually well-represented in the collection, as are entertaining designs for buildings, board games, and signs of the Zodiac.

While some of the works in this collection were created anonymously—often to protect the creator from ridicule, incarceration, or worse—the collection also includes imagery by many significant artists of the time period, including Albrecht Dürer (1471–1528), Hans Holbein (1497–1543) and Lucas Cranach, the Younger (1515–1586).

Gaspar Huberti (Belgian, 1619-1684). Untitled or The fight for the man's pants. Hand-colored engraving. The eternal topic of the struggle for power between and among the sexes, and the question 'who wears the pants' is one that provides occasion for humor as well as serious tensions.

Frida Kahlo (Mexican, 1907–1954). 'Self-portrait with Thorn Necklace and Hummingbird' (1940). Oil on canvas, 61.25 cm x 47 cm. Harry Ransom Center. © 2009 Banco de Mexico Diego Rivera & Frida Kahlo Museums Trust. Av Cinco de Mayo No. 2, Col. Centro, Del. Cuauhtemoc 06059, Mexico, DF

The Harry Ransom Center is displaying Mexican artist Frida Kahlo’s Self–portrait with Thorn Necklace and Hummingbird (1940) through March 21.

The painting, one of the Ransom Center’s most famous and frequently borrowed art works, has been on almost continuous loan since 1990. During that time, the painting has been featured in exhibitions in more than 25 museums in the United States and around the world.

You can view an interactive map that illustrates the travels of Kahlo’s Self–portrait…

Cover of 'Dracula: The sets and costumes of the Broadway production of the play designed by Edward Gorey'

Patricia C. Brückmann, Emeritus Professor of English at the University of Toronto, recently spent time working in the Edward Gorey collection at the Ransom Center for a book she is writing about his work. Gorey (1925–2000) was a writer, illustrator, and a designer of books, sets, and costumes. Born in Chicago, Gorey attended the Francis Parker School (which also claims Ransom Center playwright David Mamet as an alumnus). He spent a semester at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and later attended Harvard University, where he roomed with Frank O’Hara. He is well-known for animating the opening sequence of PBS’s Mystery! series,…

Finished film poster for ‘Kidnapped’

The star system emerged around 1910 when film producers began noting the public’s preference for individual actors. People wanted to know who the “Biograph Girl” was (Florence Lawrence) and the real name of the girl with the golden curls they knew as “Little Mary” (Mary Pickford). They also wanted their photographs.

The studios quickly learned the value of controlling their own publicity. By establishing their own photography studios, they could create a consistent look for their stars that the public would associate with the studios themselves. They hired teams of publicists to control the dissemination of those images to newspapers and magazines, especially the all-important fan magazines. At one point there were more than 300 motion picture…

This large, oblong decoupage book contains more than 40 collages consisting of carefully assembled engravings from books. The decoupage has been embellished with hand-colored drops of “blood” and handwritten religious commentaries. The emphasis throughout is on images of the Crucifixion, birds, and snakes, all dripping with blood.

The album, familiarly known to us as the “Victorian Blood Book,” has been an object of fascination, horror, and mystery since it arrived with the rest of the Evelyn Waugh library in 1967.

Associate Director and Hobby Foundation Librarian Richard Oram wrote an article about the book for a prior issue of eNews. Since then, he has unearthed some new information about the book’s origins, which he discusses in a new audio slideshow, where you…

Artist José Guadalupe Posada’s graphic legacy is as recognizable today as it was in turn-of-the-century Mexico, and his distinctive skeleton print calaveras have become synonymous with the traditional Day of the Dead celebration, which is November 1.

In Jesse Cordes Selbin’s article, “José Guadalupe Posada: Printmaker to the Mexican People,” learn more about the man who ushered in Mexico’s golden age of printmaking and inspired the work of fellow artists Diego Rivera and José Clemente Orozco.

Hector Dominguez-Ruvalcaba, Associate Professor in the Department of Spanish and Portugese at The University of Texas at Austin, gives an overview of the traditions behind the Day of the Dead:

There were nine levels in the Mesoamerican afterlife. Tlalocan was a paradise reserved for those who died of…