1 00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:29,960 In 1907, a young Norwegian sailor was shipwrecked in Canada, but instead of going back to Norway, 2 00:00:29,960 --> 00:00:31,880 he decided to stay in Canada. 3 00:00:31,880 --> 00:00:36,520 That decision would have a huge impact on the history of American popular art. 4 00:00:36,520 --> 00:00:38,960 The sailor's name was Amundetal. 5 00:00:38,960 --> 00:00:43,480 Soon after that shipwreck, he began working as a tattoo artist, and within a few years, 6 00:00:43,480 --> 00:00:45,560 he settled in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. 7 00:00:45,560 --> 00:00:49,640 There, he became one of the most important people in tattoo history. 8 00:00:49,640 --> 00:00:55,640 As someone who loves the history of tattoos, I had to talk to a tattoo historian in Milwaukee to learn more. 9 00:00:55,640 --> 00:01:00,640 Take us back to the beginning. 10 00:01:00,640 --> 00:01:02,640 What is a tattoo? 11 00:01:02,640 --> 00:01:06,640 A tattoo is a graphic representation. 12 00:01:06,640 --> 00:01:13,640 It is a picture that someone who is a trained professional of some type puts into your skin. 13 00:01:13,640 --> 00:01:17,640 So the ink is put into a layer of your skin with a needle. 14 00:01:17,640 --> 00:01:18,640 It is then permanent. 15 00:01:18,640 --> 00:01:24,640 The basic is a needle or a sharp stick or a thorn, some sort of sharpened object 16 00:01:24,640 --> 00:01:28,640 that gets dipped in ink and literally tapped into the skin. 17 00:01:28,640 --> 00:01:35,640 The tattoo machine was invented and patented in the late 19th century, and so by the 19th and 19th and 20s, 18 00:01:35,640 --> 00:01:41,640 there were a lot more people who could get their hands on an essentially an easier way to tattoo and a quicker way to tattoo. 19 00:01:41,640 --> 00:01:45,640 Tattoos have been around for thousands of years. 20 00:01:45,640 --> 00:01:51,640 Some of the oldest tattoos found on mummified remains date back over 5,000 years ago. 21 00:01:51,640 --> 00:01:53,640 But how do we know about this deep history? 22 00:01:53,640 --> 00:01:57,640 Can you talk a little bit about how we know about tattooing from the past? 23 00:01:57,640 --> 00:02:02,640 In lots of ways, so there are definitely some tattooed mummies out there from various time periods, 24 00:02:02,640 --> 00:02:10,640 but there are lots of representations of humans with artwork on them that now looking at them we can interpret as tattoos. 25 00:02:10,640 --> 00:02:17,640 There is evidence of Greek tattoos in like representations of people on Greek pottery. 26 00:02:17,640 --> 00:02:20,640 For some people, tattoos hold religious meaning. 27 00:02:20,640 --> 00:02:23,640 For some, tattoos have been done as a health practice. 28 00:02:23,640 --> 00:02:26,640 Some people get tattoos because they're beautiful or cool. 29 00:02:26,640 --> 00:02:33,640 With so much history, it's not surprising to learn that cultures all over the world have practiced tattooing for different reasons. 30 00:02:33,640 --> 00:02:35,640 What are we looking at? 31 00:02:35,640 --> 00:02:42,640 We are looking at some really beautiful flash drawn by the master of Milwaukee, Amunditzel. 32 00:02:42,640 --> 00:02:45,640 Flash art sheets are an important part of tattooing history. 33 00:02:45,640 --> 00:02:49,640 These sheets display designs that were available from a tattoo artist. 34 00:02:49,640 --> 00:02:52,640 But why are these designs called flash? 35 00:02:52,640 --> 00:02:56,640 Some historians think it comes from tattooing's connection to the circus. 36 00:02:56,640 --> 00:03:03,640 Tattoo artists would display their flash sheets in a flashy manner to attract the attention of potential customers. 37 00:03:03,640 --> 00:03:07,640 Other historians think the word comes from how easy it is to select a design. 38 00:03:07,640 --> 00:03:09,640 You can choose it in a flash. 39 00:03:09,640 --> 00:03:17,640 Whatever the terms origins today, flash is how we refer to pre-drawn designs that tattoo artists make available to their customers. 40 00:03:17,640 --> 00:03:22,640 How does a Norwegian man end up in Milwaukee, Wisconsin tattooing for a living? 41 00:03:22,640 --> 00:03:23,640 Great question. 42 00:03:23,640 --> 00:03:33,640 So, Dietzel was born in Norway in 1891 and his father died when he was a teenager and he became a sailor to help supplement family income. 43 00:03:33,640 --> 00:03:39,640 And he actually ended up shipwrecked in Canada and sort of stranded and then made his way to the United States. 44 00:03:39,640 --> 00:03:45,640 He was a tattoo artist who worked in Milwaukee from 1912 to 1967. 45 00:03:45,640 --> 00:03:52,640 He had learned to tattoo an onboard ship as, again, something one does is one passes the time on a ship for months at a time. 46 00:03:52,640 --> 00:03:54,640 And he was very good. 47 00:03:54,640 --> 00:04:02,640 He was, I think, if you look at images of tattoos in the past, sometimes you look at tattoos and go, oh, that's not very good. 48 00:04:02,640 --> 00:04:06,640 But Dietzel's tattoos were very, they were well done. 49 00:04:06,640 --> 00:04:09,640 He was obviously a very, very talented artist. 50 00:04:09,640 --> 00:04:13,640 But he was also someone who continually practiced his art. 51 00:04:13,640 --> 00:04:15,640 So, he took art classes. 52 00:04:15,640 --> 00:04:16,640 He took painting classes. 53 00:04:16,640 --> 00:04:23,640 And he tattooed thousands and thousands and thousands of people in Milwaukee, especially during World War I and World War II. 54 00:04:23,640 --> 00:04:29,640 He also traveled in the 19 teens with carnivals and circuses as a tattooist. 55 00:04:29,640 --> 00:04:36,640 So, he both performed as a tattoo man and he also tattooed as part of his job. 56 00:04:36,640 --> 00:04:40,640 So, he would take flash places and display it. 57 00:04:40,640 --> 00:04:44,640 And he also then displayed this flash in his store to attract customers in Milwaukee. 58 00:04:44,640 --> 00:04:51,640 Starting in the 1870s and 1880s, there were heavily tattooed people who toured as a part of circus side shows. 59 00:04:51,640 --> 00:04:56,640 At this time, it would have been really rare to see a person covered in tattoos. 60 00:04:56,640 --> 00:05:03,640 These performers traveled across the United States and Europe, displaying their tattooed bodies before paying audiences. 61 00:05:03,640 --> 00:05:10,640 Some of these tattooed people were also tattoo artists, and so part of the act would be enticing customers to come get a tattoo after the show. 62 00:05:10,640 --> 00:05:19,640 While many circus performers in side shows found community, good paying jobs and independence, many were poorly treated by circus owners. 63 00:05:19,640 --> 00:05:26,640 And while displaying tattooed people introduced audiences to this cultural practice, it didn't normalize that practice, 64 00:05:26,640 --> 00:05:30,640 meaning that these shows didn't fight negative beliefs around tattoos. 65 00:05:30,640 --> 00:05:35,640 And for a long time, this is what prevented historians from taking tattoo history seriously. 66 00:05:35,640 --> 00:05:40,640 Can you talk about the American traditional tattoo style and what that means today? 67 00:05:40,640 --> 00:05:47,640 Sure, so what we now call old school or American traditional is a very distinct style of tattooing. 68 00:05:47,640 --> 00:05:53,640 It is tattoos that have generally uniform line outlines, limited color palette. 69 00:05:53,640 --> 00:06:09,640 So green, yellow, red, blue, very flat colors, not a lot of shading, and using what we would think of as traditional, like early American, late 19th century imagery. 70 00:06:09,640 --> 00:06:19,640 Seen in, say, visual culture in your home, in magazine drawings, decorations on furniture, decorations on paper. 71 00:06:19,640 --> 00:06:25,640 They were images that they were surrounded by in daily life in the end of the 19th century, early into the 20th century. 72 00:06:25,640 --> 00:06:29,640 They became part of tattooing because they were popular images. 73 00:06:29,640 --> 00:06:32,640 What makes it American? Why did it develop here in this country? 74 00:06:32,640 --> 00:06:37,640 During World War I, during World War II, obviously lots of Americans were going off to war. 75 00:06:37,640 --> 00:06:42,640 They were getting these commemorative tattoos, and tattooers were, they were doing a lot of business. 76 00:06:42,640 --> 00:06:53,640 They were doing a lot of tattoos, and so the images got simpler. They got quicker because if you've got a line of people out the door, you've got to get them all tattooed and back to their military base. 77 00:06:54,640 --> 00:06:58,640 Almond Ditzel was a key figure in the American traditional tattoo style. 78 00:06:58,640 --> 00:07:04,640 Like Amelia said, this was originally based on images from popular sources like magazines and decorative arts. 79 00:07:04,640 --> 00:07:12,640 The designs were then simplified for speed during wartime years, when thousands of new soldiers came to tattoo shops like Ditzel's for a tattoo. 80 00:07:12,640 --> 00:07:15,640 Ditzel's art spread through more than just his images. 81 00:07:15,640 --> 00:07:19,640 He also trained other tattoo artists who became famous in their own right. 82 00:07:19,640 --> 00:07:27,640 This relationship between a teacher and a student is an important part of how tattooing style is maintained and developed over decades, and has continued today. 83 00:07:27,640 --> 00:07:32,640 Wait a minute, Casey, that one looks a lot like the one you have on your arm. 84 00:07:32,640 --> 00:07:35,640 Did you choose that specific tattoo? 85 00:07:35,640 --> 00:07:46,640 I did, so I've always loved American traditional tattooing because of its connection to history, and because I'm from Wisconsin, and I love Wisconsin so much, the minute that I learned about Ditzel, I knew that I wanted a Ditzel girl. 86 00:07:47,640 --> 00:07:51,640 In modern American culture, tattoos were historically stigmatized. 87 00:07:51,640 --> 00:07:56,640 That means they were looked down on or thought of as a lesser art form not worthy of study. 88 00:07:56,640 --> 00:08:01,640 Sometimes that stigma got so bad that tattooing was outlawed. 89 00:08:01,640 --> 00:08:07,640 In Milwaukee, tattooing was made illegal from 1967 all the way until the late 1990s. 90 00:08:07,640 --> 00:08:14,640 So we're standing here in front of this flash sheet, and we keep talking about how this is art, and someone was thoughtful enough to save this. 91 00:08:14,640 --> 00:08:21,640 But I think when people hear art, they think of art in museums and paintings, so why wouldn't something like this have been thought of in the same way? 92 00:08:21,640 --> 00:08:27,640 This is art. These are original, hand-drawn creations, but there is definitely still a stigma. 93 00:08:27,640 --> 00:08:34,640 But I would also say that there is a lot of art out in the world that isn't in museums, and that doesn't make it less. 94 00:08:34,640 --> 00:08:37,640 That just makes it art not in museums. 95 00:08:37,640 --> 00:08:44,640 Tattooing is one of humanity's oldest art forms, but for a long time historians ignored them, or stigmatized them. 96 00:08:44,640 --> 00:08:48,640 They're an example of how bias can get in the way of studying and understanding history. 97 00:08:48,640 --> 00:08:54,640 In American visual culture, tattoos are essential for understanding many of our common symbols. 98 00:08:54,640 --> 00:09:00,640 Flags, ships, anchors, all owe something to tattoo artists like Milwaukee's Aum and Ditzel. 99 00:09:00,640 --> 00:09:03,640 But there are still lots of topics that need more study. 100 00:09:03,640 --> 00:09:07,640 What are some topics you're passionate about that you think more people should study? 101 00:09:07,640 --> 00:09:09,640 Maybe you can become the expert. 102 00:09:09,640 --> 00:09:11,640 I'm so lost in school. 103 00:09:15,640 --> 00:09:18,640 I know, I'm like, I've never been asked to do that. 104 00:09:18,640 --> 00:09:19,640 Yeah. 105 00:09:20,640 --> 00:09:22,640 I forgot really normally. 106 00:09:22,640 --> 00:09:24,640 Did you do art today? 107 00:09:33,640 --> 00:09:35,640 Thank you.