| OCR Text |
Show and scholarship, as they do about the events they record. From the beginning of the investigation, it became increasingly evident that the research could not follow standard art historical methodology. Until the 1970s, little art historical evaluation of the aquatints could be found in the literature. Articles referring to the aquatints, with few exceptions, used the aquatints simply to corroborate historical or ethnological details. Art historical information concerning Bodmer himself was even more difficult to elicit. Viewed by most art historians as a minor Barbizon artist, Bodmer and his contributions have been largely overlooked; information almost invariably was extracted from nineteenth-century catalogue raisonnes, which tend to replicate each other, paraphrasing information that has never been adequately verified. Further, Bodmer's American aquatints, although almost always mentioned in these references, are viewed rather as an aberration, out of context with his later works. Little or no reference is made to his work previous to the expedition; such information may have better explained his success as a scientific illustrator. In the mid-1970s, two publications heralded a change. The Joslyn Art Museum Center for Western Studies began publicizing Bodmer's American watercolors, along with its collection of Maximilian's papers. Serious scholarship surrounding the expedition began anew through the use of these original documents. In 1976, People of the First Man, which documented the expedition through Maximilian's journal and Bodmer's watercolors, was published. The same year, Hans Lang, a Swiss historian enamored with the romance of Bodmer's American experience, published his book Indianer |
