ART-PRESENTATION:Tatoueurs, tatoués

The art of tattooing is one of the oldest forms of art in the history of mankind. People from different cultures across the globe “paint” their bodies for over 5000 years, under religious rituals or as status symbols, or simply for aesthetic reasons. In 1991, on the mountain in the Otz Valley, between Italy and Austria, was discovered Otzi, a frozen mummy dating from the fourth millennium before Christ. In his skin, oidentified several small tattoos, especially on his knees, which is believed to have been used as a treatment for arthritis. Tattoos were found also on the mummy of a priestess from ancient Egypt, who lived 2,000 years before the birth of Christ….

By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: musée du quai Branly Archive

The exhibition “Tatoueurs, tatoués”, explores the world of tattooing and offers a unique approach to this ancestral practice, presenting 300 historical and contemporary works from a variety of countries. For the first time, an exhibition presents the artistic dimension of tattooing and its history throughout human culture from its first appearance. In Section: From global to marginal, a graphic chronology presents the most famous tattooists and tattooed subjects. It traces their development and shows the commitment of these pioneers in promoting tattooing as an artistic practice in active development together with their efforts to exchange knowledge and technical innovations. This presentation of a Wall of Fame of the world of the tattoo, is the first such synthesis ever carried out on the history of contemporary tattooing (late 18th century-1980s). A secret language developed on the bodies of the tattooed, paralleling its development for identitary and social reasons in ethnic groups such as the Maori. The tattooed subject, considered a social exile, first became an exhibit in 1840, during the Chicago World Fair, which acted as a catalyst for the first travelling circuses. In the section: New order: Japan, North America and Europe, The exhibition presents among others, the work of the great masters who revolutionised the contemporary tattooing world, including the artist Ed Hardy, the greatest living contemporary tattoo artist. In Tokyo the cradle of traditional Japanese tattooing in the 17th century, illustrations by Hokusai and Kuniyoshi were the origin of an infatuation with tattooing. A popular protest symbol for the “common man”, and for a number of groups, the practice was finally prohibited in the late 19th century. In North America, while the native tribes, had always practised the art of tattooing, in 1881 one of the pioneers of tattooing in the United States, Samuel O’Reilly, developed the electric tattooing machine. In Europe more than 4500 years old, the naturally-preserved mummy known as Ötzi provides the oldest evidence yet found of tattooing in Western Europe. Colonial pressure and evangelisation meant that the West stifled, religious and identitary tattooing in Europe as it did in the territories it colonised. It was through the many trade exchanges established with the colonies that tattooing reappeared in the urban environment. Section 3: The renewal of traditional tattooing: Oceania and South East Asia. This part of the exhibition highlights the diversity of tattooing traditions, their aesthetic and ritual dimension but also the renewal of these practices and their modern developments, examining in particular Polynesia, New Zealand, Samoa, Borneo, the Philippines and Thailand.
Section 4: New territories: Chicano and Chinese tattoos. Chicano tattooing appeared in the 1970s, transmitted within prisons containing members of gangs from Central America and populations with Latino origins living in the US frontier region. It was principally in California, then in Mexico, that chicano tattooing developed into a new school, both graphic and cultural.
In China, tattooing has held a great number of social statuses over several millennia. Depending on the successive imperial dynasties and their religions, tattooing has been associated with marginality, criminality or adopted by the noble and/or bourgeoise classes. The practice was prohibited by Mao Zedong during the cultural revolution of the 1960s, as he considered it to be a manifestation of impurity and dishonesty. Tattoo Now is following the styles launched by the tattoo artists Alex Binnie, Curly and Xed LeHead, a new generation has brought tattooing into the third millennium. Two schools can be discerned nowadays: some tattoo artists reinterpret historical genres, preferring to the Japanese irezumi, or to the American old school, the wild vein of Russian gulag tattooing or the European “brut” line. Others formulate aesthetics that are freed from current codes to explore the possibilities linked to graphic arts, in which typography, pixels, frames and diagrams make other motifs and compositions appear, going as far as abstraction. However, both, for the last decade, have expressed an unshakable determination to renew tattooing and its codes to propose a new aesthetic.

Info: Tatoueurs, tatoués, Curating: Anne & Julien, musée du quai Branly, 37 quai Branly, Paris, Duration: 5/7-2/8/15, Days & Hours: Tue, Wed, Sun: 11:00-19:00, Thu, Fri, Sat: 11:00-21:00, www.quaibranly.fr/en