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Show 45 as a composite image produced much later, had become an idealized simulation of the event, interpreted by Bodmer. This interpretation was based upon memory, as well as the source materials, and was modified by the demands inherent in the artist's search for idealization. What implications does this idealization hold for art used for scientific documentation? Viewing the aquatint as a document, rather than as a work of art, creates special problems. Art used in the cause of scientific documentation produces an uneasy alliance between the worlds of observable fact and intuitive knowledge. If successful, a balance is struck, in which the real and the ideal unite, giving a more comprehensive understanding than if either is viewed separately. The five portrait figures in the proof state of Scalp Dance represent additional information, the truth of which can nowhere be verified. Even though all five Indians were most likely present at the ceremony, this information is secondary, since it is based, not on the eyewitness documents, but on Bodmer's memory and artistic vision. In comparing the aquatint with the source materials, it becomes evident that Bodmer was reorganizing his information to fit an aesthetic vision of the event he had witnessed. The primary information of the central figures documented in the sketches takes second place to these intrusive portrait figures, which have been made the most important element of the aquatint composition. This process of reorganization and interpretation is the essence of art, which is an idealized restructuring of reality. Because a work of art can never simply be an objective reproduction of reality, but rather will always involve a certain amount of reorganization, the collaboration between |
