Font Specimen Poster | Rachel Bartholomay

Font Specimen Poster © Rachel Bartholomay 2016

Above Font specimen poster by design student Rachel Bartholomay (©2016) at the University of Northern Iowa.

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Recently while reading Nicholas Fox Weber, The Bauhaus Group: Six Masters of Modernism (New Haven CT: Yale University Press), I ran across a passage about a class exercise that the painter Paul Klee witnessed in a course at the Bauhaus taught by Johannes Itten. It required his students to draw in the dark, and of course this reminded me of the later, related experiments by Hoyt Sherman at Ohio State University, which I wrote at length about in the early 1990s. Here is the passage from Weber's interesting book (p. 115)—

At 5 pm that same day, Itten gave another course in a large lecture hall constructed like an amphitheater, where people sat on the steps rather than on seats. This time the master projected on the wall a large image of Matisse's La Danse and had the students draw its essential compositional elements in the dark. Itten's wife sat at his feet, with everyone else huddled in close. The sole exception was Klee, who sat as far away as possible, at the very top of the amphitheater, in a proper chair. Looking on from this perch, he smoked his pipe.

Ping Pong and Indian Haircuts

Above Illustrations of Native American boys' haircuts, according to designated clan, from Francis La Flesche, "The Osage Tribe: Child Naming Rite" in 45th Annual Report, Bureau of American Ethnology (1925-26), Washington DC, 1928. Top row (left to right): Head and tail of elk; head, horns and tail of bison; tuft of hair on bison's back. Second row: Head, body and tail of small birds; head, wings and tail of eagle; turtle shell, with head, feet and tail. Third row: Reptile teeth;  a compass, showing four directional points; shaggy side of the wolf. Bottom row: Horns and tail of bison; head and tail of deer; and head, tail and immature horns of a young bison.

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Until recently, I had no idea that the Lakota Indians who performed in Buffalo Bill's Wild West show enjoyed playing ping pong. For more about this, check out the online photos of one of their games at the Denver Public Library's website. The spectators are other Wild West performers, including Mexican vaqueros, Russian Cossacks, US cavalrymen, cowboys, a Rough Rider, and other Native Americans. Seated in the center behind the table is a man in a suit who is holding up paper money, so presumably there was some gambling involved.

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In 1893, concurrent with the Columbian Exposition or the Chicago World's Fair (but not officially part of it), the Wild West played in Chicago from May through October. There is a detailed account of what happened during the show's single most profitable season in L.C. Moses, Wild West Shows and the Images of American Indians 1883-1933 (Albuquerque NM: University of New Mexico Press, 1996). Here's an excerpt (p. 140)—

That season, Cody's Show Indians made good money, toured Chicago, took boat rides on Lake Michigan, ate peanuts and popcorn until they could eat no more, bought boutonnieres and funny coconut-fiber hats and wore them proudly, and on one occasion rode the merry-go-round [a carousel with wooden horses] by the hour. One evening in the high summer of Chicago's White City, fifteen Lakota led by Rocky Bear and No Neck mounted the painted ponies. As the carousel picked up speed, No Neck, holding the reins in both hands, gave a full-throated yell. Others in his party joined him. The News-Record placed the scene in its proper context. The Show Indians, observed the Record, "seem to like being jerked around on a carousel. They prefer it to the art galleries, and some people who are not Indians feel the same way." In all, about twenty-seven million people, a few hundred Indians among them, visited the fair. Most, Indians and non-Indians alike, probably had a glorious time.

Wild West Indians in Paris

© Roy R. Behrens, Indigenous Nativity (2004). Purchase online.

I've been reading about Native Americans in connection with a talk I give for Humanities Iowa on Iowa-born Wild West showman William F. Cody. It seems clear that throughout his life, the convivial scout had a propensity for the pleasantries of "firewater" in large amounts. Earlier in the 19th century, according to James Welch in Killing Custer (NY: Norton, 1994), "the white man's water" was a brew of "tobacco, capsicum, molasses, peppers, and alcohol mixed with river water and whatever else could produce a fire in the belly" (p. 26).

In 1889, Cody took his Wild West show (including a number of Native Americans) on a performance tour of Europe, concurrent with the World's Fair in Paris. It was the Eiffel Tower's premiere, and all sorts of celebrities attended, as is vividly described by Jill Jonnes in Eiffel's Tower (NY: Penguin, 2009). The Native Americans enjoyed enormous popularity with the French public. According to Jonnes, their performances were so well known in Paris that—

the clowns at the Cirque d'Été [summer circus] had worked up a parody called Kachalo-Ball. The real Wild West Indians instantly gave it cachet by attending the show in groups each night, cheering wildly as the French clowns satirized their riding and their wars and attacks. When the clowns took to dancing their version of Sioux war dances, the visiting Native Americans laughed so hard they had tears running down their faces.