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Show 87 nature stimulated the senses, providing the intensity of emotion necessary to allow the romantic to participate, to reunite, and to become part of the natural world.8 Thus, because Bodmer was painting a "landscape," he was free to explore the emotional confrontation he and Maximilian experienced upon first seeing the "castles." It is telling that Maximilian was not immune to the illusion of the White Castles. The scientist and the artist had shared a common vision and the similarity of Maximilian's description and Bodmer's painting to one another is remarkable. Explicit in Maximilian's journal entry, implicit in Bodmer's watercolor, was the acknowledgement of a subjective, rather than objective, vision of nature. Both men described what they saw. However, at issue is the fact that they saw more, with an inner-vision developed through previous conditioning and expectations; both men "saw" the castles, but they also saw what they were prepared--what they expected--to see. The receptivity of both the scientist and the artist to emotional response opens up several points that must be examined. Nineteenth-Century Science: Empiricism and the Symbolic Quest In The White Castles Bodmer was unrestrained by Maximilian's usual demands for accurate documentation. He painted with an inner eye the emotions evoked by the initial optical illusion of the castles. This extra-vision, the ability to extract and interpret emotive information from nature, is the normal province of art. Bodmer's grouping together of familiar, emotionally charged elements in his landscape were touchstones to the viewer, allowing examination of subjective responses that were immediately understood in the |
