The Look Back

– Kacie Lucchini Butcher: In 1907, a young Norwegian sailor was shipwrecked in Canada, but instead of going back to Norway, he decided to stay in Canada.

That decision would have a huge impact on the history of American popular art.

The sailor's name was Amund Dietzel.

Soon after that shipwreck, he began working as a tattoo artist, and within a few years, he settled in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

There, he became one of the most important people in tattoo history.

As someone who loves the history of tattoos, I had to talk to a tattoo historian in Milwaukee to learn more.

[upbeat music] Take us back to the beginning.

What is a tattoo?

– Amelia Klem Osterud: A tattoo is a graphic representation.

It is a picture that someone who is a trained professional of some type puts into your skin.

So, the ink is put into a layer of your skin with a needle.

It is then permanent.

The basic is a needle or a sharp stick or a thorn, some sort of sharpened object that gets dipped in ink and literally tapped into the skin.

The tattoo machine was invented and patented in the late 19th century, and so by the 19-teens, 1920s, 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.

- Tattoos have been around for thousands of years.

Some of the oldest tattoos found on mummified remains date back over 5,000 years ago.

But how do we know about this deep history?

Can you talk a little bit about how we know about tattooing from the past?

- In lots of ways.

So, there are definitely some tattooed mummies out there from various time periods, but there are lots of representations of humans with artwork on them that now, looking at them, we can interpret as tattoos.

There is evidence of Greek tattoos in, like, representations of people on Greek pottery.

- For some people, tattoos hold religious meaning.

For some, tattoos have been done as a health practice.

Some people get tattoos because they're beautiful or cool.

With so much history, it's not surprising to learn that cultures all over the world have practiced tattooing for different reasons.

- Sergio Gonzlez: What are we looking at?

– Amelia: We are looking at some really beautiful flash drawn by the Master of Milwaukee, Amund Dietzel.

- Flash art sheets are an important part of tattooing history.

These sheets display designs that were available from a tattoo artist.

But why are these designs called flash?

Some historians think it comes from tattooing's connection to the circus.

Tattoo artists would display their flash sheets in a "flashy manner" to attract the attention of potential customers.

Other historians think the word comes from how easy it is to select a design.

You can choose it in a flash.

Whatever the term's origins, today, flash is how we refer to pre-drawn designs that tattoo artists make available to their customers.

How does a Norwegian man end up in Milwaukee, Wisconsin tattooing for a living?

- Great question.

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.

And he actually ended up shipwrecked in Canada and sort of stranded, and then made his way to the United States.

He was a tattoo artist who worked in Milwaukee from 1912 to 1967.

He had learned to tattoo onboard ship as, again, something one does as one passes the time on a ship for months at a time.

And he was very good.

He was, I think, if you look at images of tattoos in the past, sometimes you look at-- I look at tattoos and go, "Oh, that's not very good."

[Kacie laughs] But Dietzel's tattoos were very, they were well done.

He was obviously a very, very talented artist.

But he was also someone who continually practiced his art.

So, he took art classes.

He took painting classes.

And he tattooed thousands and thousands and thousands of people in Milwaukee, especially during World War I and World War II.

He also traveled in the 19-teens with carnivals and circuses as a tattooist.

So, he both performed as a tattooed man and he also tattooed as part of his job.

So, he would take flash places and display it.

And he also then displayed this flash in his store to attract customers in Milwaukee.

- Starting in the 1870s and 1880s, there were heavily tattooed people who toured as a part of circus side shows.

At this time, it would have been really rare to see a person covered in tattoos.

These performers traveled across the United States and Europe, displaying their tattooed bodies before paying audiences.

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.

While many circus performers in side shows found community, good-paying jobs, and independence, many were poorly treated by circus owners.

And while displaying tattooed people introduced audiences to this cultural practice, it didn't normalize that practice, meaning that these shows didn't fight negative beliefs around tattoos.

And for a long time, this is what prevented historians from taking tattoo history seriously.

Can you talk about the American traditional tattoo style and what that means today?

- Sure, so what we now call old school or American traditional is a very distinct style of tattooing.

It is tattoos that have generally uniform line outlines, limited color palette.

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.

Seen in, say, visual culture in your home, in magazine drawings, decorations on furniture, decorations on paper.

They were images that they were surrounded by in daily life in the end of the 19th century, early into the 20th century.

They became part of tattooing because they were popular images.

- What makes it American?

Why did it develop here in this country?

- During World War I, during World War II, obviously lots of Americans were going off to war.

They were getting these commemorative tattoos, and tattooers were, they were doing a lot of business.

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.

- Amund Dietzel was a key figure in the American traditional tattoo style.

Like Amelia said, this was originally based on images from popular sources like magazines and decorative arts.

The designs were then simplified for speed during wartime years, when thousands of new soldiers came to tattoo shops like Dietzel's for a tattoo.

Dietzel's art spread through more than just his images.

He also trained other tattoo artists who became famous in their own right.

This relationship between a teacher and a student is an important part of how tattooing style is maintained and developed over decades, and is continued today.

- Wait a minute, Kacie, that one looks a lot like one you have on your arm.

Did you choose that specific tattoo?

- 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 Dietzel, I knew that I wanted a Dietzel girl.

In modern American culture, tattoos were historically stigmatized.

That means they were looked down on or thought of as a lesser art form not worthy of study.

Sometimes that stigma got so bad that tattooing was outlawed.

In Milwaukee, tattooing was made illegal from 1967 all the way until the late 1990s.

So, we're standing here in front of this flash sheet, and, you know, we keep talking about how this is art, and someone was thoughtful enough to save this.

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?

- This is art.

These are original, hand-drawn creations, but there is definitely still a stigma.

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.

That just makes it art not in museums.

- Tattooing is one of humanity's oldest art forms, but for a long time, historians ignored them or stigmatized them.

They're an example of how bias can get in the way of studying and understanding history.

In American visual culture, tattoos are essential for understanding many of our common symbols.

Flags, ships, anchors all owe something to tattoo artists like Milwaukee's Amund Dietzel.

But there are still lots of topics that need more study.

What are some topics you're passionate about that you think more people should study?

Maybe you can become the expert.

– Producer: And show them off in style.

[Amelia laughs] - I have no idea what to do.

- I know, I'm like, I've never been asked to do that.

- Yeah.

[Sergio laughs] - I forgot how normalized... - Did you do arms today before?