Bodmer_Publication

Perognathus fasciatus,
aus/from: Wied, 1839: «Über
einige Nager mit Äusseren
Backen taschen aus dem
westlichen Nord-America»
probably knew well. At the same time, the way that plants and trees are depicted
may also reflect the representation of landscapes in contemporary German painting
– some of them by Bodmer himself – which just goes to show that on both sides
of the Atlantic nature had not yet been fully tamed.
That it is impossible to separate the what from the how becomes even more evident
in Bodmer’s great Indian portraits. Here he is part of a complex tradition of
representations of the “other,” where scientific demand for precision intersects
with an aesthetic impulse that conveys emotional and intellectual attitudes
towards the “other” – in its crudest form, the “other” is portrayed as ugly if rejection
and distinction are intended, and handsome where a meeting of equals or
even identification are proposed. This is not the place for however rough a sketch
of the history of the representation of North American Indians in imagery, but a few
representatives need to be named all the same. Roughly, Bodmer’s contemporaries
include George Catlin, the self-taught painter, as well as the professional portraitist
Charles Bird King, who had, earlier on, produced paintings from which prints were
made in large numbers. These were published virtually at the same time as Bodmer’s
illustrations. A little later than Bodmer we have Rudolf Friedrich Kurz, an academically
trained painter who (in spite of the fact that his development took place in
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