10 may, 2013
Wild ink tattoo studio
Guwahati, Assam (India)
Artist- Sanjeev deka
Monday, May 13, 2013
Tattooing makes transition from cult to fine art
A design by the artist Duke Riley called
"Laugh Now, Cry Later."
The revelation went beyond the
acknowledgement from Ms. Moss, one of
the most photographed women in the
world, that she had tattoos. It included
the claim that the swallows on her
haunch were the work of the German-
born British artist Lucian Freud , who had
died the previous year.
In a rare interview published in the
December issue of Vanity Fair magazine,
Ms. Moss pondered the financial value of
that tattoo: “It’s an original Freud. I
wonder how much a collector would pay
for that? A few million? I’d skin-graft it.”
The numbers might sound surprising, but
a nude portrait of Ms. Moss, painted by
Mr. Freud in 2002 while the model was
pregnant, sold three years later at
Christie’s in London for €3.92 million, or
about $5.14 million at current exchange
rates. The mention of a skin graft put the
spotlight on the relationship between
tattoos and fine art — and by extension,
art collection.
Until recently, the integration of tattoos
into the art world was mostly confined to
performance art. In 2000, for example,
the Spanish artist Santiago Sierra paid
four prostitutes the price of a hit of heroin
and filmed them having single black lines
tattooed across their backs
. But today, tattoos — much like graffiti,
which in the past decade has been
transformed from cult to collectible — are
increasingly being embraced by the art
world, particularly in areas where art and
fashion meet.
For the introduction in 2011 of Garage
magazine, for instance, the editor Dasha
Zhukova commissioned artists including
Jeff Koons, Dinos Chapman and Richard
Prince to design tattoos. One version
showed part of a nude model whose
private parts were covered by a green
butterfly sticker created by the English
artist Damien Hirst
. Taking off the sticker uncovered a
butterfly tattoo, also designed by Mr.
Hirst.
Prestigious art institutions like the Musée
du Quai Branly in Paris have taken note.
The museum is planning an exhibition in
May 2014 called “Tatoueurs, Tatoués,” or
“Tattooists, Tattooed,” to explore
tattooing as an artistic medium. The show
will include “works produced specially for
the event by internationally renowned
artist tattooists, body suits on canvas and
volumes comprising imprints taken from
living models,” the museum said in a
news release.
Two exponents who are bridging the art
and tattoo worlds are the artist Duke
Riley , based in New York, and the London-
based tattooist Maxime Büchi. Mr. Riley,
who trained in painting and sculpture at
the Rhode Island School of Design and
the Pratt Institute in New York, describes
himself as a “fine artist and tattooist.” His
growing success as an artist has
“elevated” his status as a tattooist, he
said.
Mr. Büchi, a London-based tattooist and
the editor of Sang Bleu magazine, which is
available at the Tate Modern in London
and the Colette store in Paris , says the
Internet has made it possible to browse a
huge online catalog of tattoo art. While he
claims to dislike the term “tattoo artist,”
he said that an increasingly discerning
public had bolstered demand to be inked
by someone whose work in other media
is sold, exhibited and recognized.
In addition to being an exhibition space,
the Internet provides opportunities for
marketing and self-promotion in a rapidly
changing field. Twenty years ago, Mr.
Riley said, tattooists learned a wide range
of styles to demonstrate mastery of the
craft. Today, by contrast, there is a sharp
increase in tattooists seeking to establish
unique artistic identities.
As with contemporary art, questions
about originality and copyright have
emerged. Some see imitation in the field
as part of a collective tattoo tradition,
while others are more protective. Mr.
Riley is sanguine about the subject —
when his work is copied, he said, he is
flattered. Mr. Büchi said he felt
“honored” when copied, but he
acknowledged the complexity of the
issue. “If you are creating a style which is
so specific that nobody imitates it,” he
said, “then you are clearly doing
something wrong. But it’s a delicate
thing.”
Mr. Büchi spoke of a “license” of sorts, an
agreement between those who are
inspired and influenced by one another.
“That’s different from someone seeing a
design of mine online and passing it off as
their own,” he said.
As for Ms. Moss’s musings about reselling
tattoos, Mr. Riley said that skin grafting
had come up in conversation “at least
once a week” in his Brooklyn parlor, East
River Tattoo.
The preservation of skin art is already a
reality. The Wellcome Collection in
London and the Amsterdam Tattoo
Museum both feature preserved tattooed
skins. And the Irish performance artist
Sandra Ann Vita Minchin, who
commissioned a tattooist to recreate a
17th- century painting by Jan Davidsz. de
Heem on her back, plans to have her skin
preserved posthumously and auctioned to
the highest bidder.
In 2006, the Belgian artist Wim Delvoye
created a piece of work titled “Tim,
2006,” in which Mr. Delvoye tattooed the
back of a man, Tim Steiner, and signed it.
In 2008, it sold to a German art collector
for €150,000, which was split between
the Zurich gallery which had sold it, the
artist and the model. Mr. Steiner displays
his skin several times a year, and has
given consent for his skin to be framed
after his death.
Preserving skin posthumously is likely to
become relatively common by the time
the 20-year-olds of today enter old age,
Mr. Riley said, particularly considering the
monetary investment involved with
collecting high-end tattoos.
Such thoughts can veer toward the
sinister. Ilse Koch, the wife of a Nazi
commandant during the Holocaust and
one of the first prominent Nazis to be
tried by the U.S. military, was accused of
having taken souvenirs from the skin of
concentration camp victims with
distinctive tattoos. In Roald Dahl’s 1952
short story “Skin,” a destitute man enters
a gallery and displays a portrait tattooed
on his back by a now celebrated painter,
leading to a bidding war and an unsettling
ending.
A more likely scenario, Mr. Riley said, is
that family members would choose to
preserve the tattoos of loved ones. For
Mr. Büchi, however, tattooing is not art
to be passed on through generations.
“The value of a tattoo lies in the fact that
it does not belong to the artist in that
way,” he said. “To preserve it would be to
devalue it. Its value is that it will die with
you.’
Sunday, May 12, 2013
A post by Iestyn flye , scarCon london
A post from me that’s not about history?
I know, I know. But I’m looking at things
in the long view- eventually ScarCon will
join my own ScarWars event as a nodal
point in the history of Scarification, so….
this post is just coming a bit early!
Ron Garza is one of my oldest friends, and
along with Steve Haworth is someone I
consider to be directly responsible for the
way that Western scarification has
evolved. He’s influenced the best in the
world and in 2006 at Scarwars LA I was
honored to present him with the ‘Keith
Alexander Award for the Advancement of
the Art and Culture of Scarification’. To
date he’s the only artist who’s been given
this award. He recently hosted ScarCon;
an international gathering of Scarification
artists hosted in London England and has
graciously contributed photos exclusively
to ModBlog and Scarwars (so check there
for pictures not included in this update!)
The artists for the inaugural London
ScarCon were: Christiane Lofblad, Ryan
Ouellette, Bruno BMA, Iestyn Flye, Ron
Garza and Brenno Alberti .
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