[Yeah_Baby]

With our second overall pick Team Silent enim leges inter arma Selects in the Visual Artist category George Catlin.



The Following is an excert from a rough draft of a paper I wrote on Catlin: If anyone is interested and you want to read 18 pages on the dude I'd be willing to send you a copy.

"In many ways Catlin was a man ahead of his time; an artist, a visionary, and a social reformer. Catlin played an instrumental role in bringing both the beauty and the mystery of the American West to the ‘cultured’ tidewater states of the eastern seaboard. However, George Catlin was himself a conflicted individual. He was a champion of ‘Indian’ Rights in so many ways, and yet somewhat exploitative of the various native cultures that he painted.


What is interesting about George Catlin are the contradictions that seem to follow the man; his apparent love for his wife that he constantly was away from[1], breaking away from the yoke of his father’s plan, yet still haunted by his father’s influence. Catlin was ahead of his time when it came to rights for Native Americans, and yet he had no moral qualms about intruding on their society, and making monetary gains at their expense. Catlin also claimed to stand against the Indian relocation and the steady march of Manifest Destiny, and yet he was one the few pioneers that took the first important steps in opening the West. What then is George Catlin’s greatest legacy? Well, much like the contradictions that form the man, his impact on the American experience is two- fold. On one hand, due to his ability to be ahead of his time, and his cultural relativism, he provides history with its most extensive record the peoples of the near Western frontier pre contamination, in its purest form. The other is that Catlin was a figure that started to reveal the mysteries of the American West, who peered the ‘light’ on the dark corners of the American frontier. Once America’s eyes turned ever more fervently on the mysterious West, whether it be the real West or the romanticized “West of the Imagination”[2] Catlin was instrumental in making the American psyche look Westward. So then with this great legacy, both positive and negative, perhaps Catlin’s life is a metaphor for the American experience!"

[1] During supplementary research one source claimed that it is likely that Catlin was a polygamist and had started a family with a native woman, possibly a Mandan due to his closeness with the tribe and his witnessing of sacred rituals. Also the Mandan’s themselves were polygamists. However this source was not peer reviewed, and found generally by accident after the primary research period. So while an interesting suggestion, it remains conjecture as far as this researcher is concerned.

[2] Credit to William Geotzmann


edit: Wow you copy and past one thing and fonts go all fubar