can tattoos be described as true art????

Hellifino!

Good luck with your quest and welcome to A2K.

thankyou.... i hope i get some replies!!!

What is "true art"?

I dare you to walk into a tattoo studio and accuse the tattooist of not being a "true artist".

Adrian is right. First you must define what you mean by "art", let alone "true art." If we define art as "the imagination and skill to create beautiful things through some medium" (a paraphrase from my New Riverside edition of Webster's II) then, of course, tattoos are art, especially if they are original. An artist can use any surface for creating a "work of art." It can be canvas, wood paneling, paper, your computer screen or...liiving human skin. What's the problem?

art versus craft are seemingly at odds as words.

but art needs craft and craft needs art and the twains do mix.

Some efforts are more one than the other.

In the long term, so what. We are interested in both here at a2k.

Osso, and the others, well put. Nice greeting for a newbie.

Welcome simdog.

smile to all... especially Paula, but also simdog...

Simdog, I don't know if they are true art - but I work in a Jobcentre - and I know employers don't like them. I also heard that if you do not have a tattoo by the time you are twenty five...your unlikely to ever have one.

have fun on A2K
Sarah.

Slightly off topic: Is the human body where the tattoo is displayed a canvas or a billboard?

It's a canvas for those who do it for themselves, such as someone who gets a tattoo that has personal signifigance somewhere discreet or in a place that is easily covered. They know that the tat is there but have no need to show it off all the time.

They are billboards when they are the "trendy" tattoos. Like when a group of 18 year old girls in pants slung so low their kneecaps show, and shirts so short they look like scarves, all go in to get similar tattoos of whatever on their lower backs because it's the "in" thing to do.

Just my opinion though. I do have two tattoos but you'd never guess it by looking at me in normal (jeans and tee shirt) clothes.

As tattoos have been around for donkeys years and Im assuming each design had a symbolism to it I can only imagine that is still relevant today.

I agree some tattoos are absolutely beautiful and are full of meaning whereas some like cartoon characters are desirable but put the wearer in a different group/tribe.

Yes I think they are art but like with art on a material canvas, some are masterpieces that will be admired by millions for years , others are rubbish.

A canvas, I would say so, and also a billboard. I believe some street gangs tattoo the # of people they have killed (shudder).

I heard the most painful spot on the body to have a tattoo put, is on the side of the ribs, about 6" above the waist. I believe there is a tribe in Africa that practices this as a right of passage for the men.

I've spoken here before about my friend who is a tattoo artist, and I consider him unambiguously an artist. He creates the designs (quite elaborate) and does the inking. It's art, any way you slice it. (Ouch.)

That said, while I think what he does is art, I'm not sure what you would call it if someone has, say, a little red heart inked on her ankle. I'd tend towards no, that's not art, but would have a heck of a time drawing the line between where one ends and another starts.

A tattoo of a little red heart isn't "art" any more than a little red heart plunked up in the corner of a greeting card is art. It is an emotional logo--meaningful, but banal.

A little red heart as part of a larger work on skin or canvas or paper might well be much more than an emotional logo.

Of course there are people who adore greeting card verse and store-bought souvenirs of Atlantic City and emotional logos. The human race is a varied group.

hey thanks for your replies, i wasn't implying that i thought tattoos were tacky it was just one of the comments in our group discussion at uni... sorry if i offended anyone!! hehe!! nevermind your opinions will help me with my research topic. obviously a contentious issue and i will have fun arguing with my lecturer about it.

simdog - we've had a number of discussions here on various aspects of ink

you'll find a wide range of perspectives

if you do searches here using : ink / tattoos / tattooing you'll be bound to dig up at least 3 or 4 of those disucssions from the past couple of years

some of us are quite passionate about our ink :wink:

Yea..and so is the man that I come across in the store one day...I was admiring what I thought was a black bear on his forearm...I made a comment on it and it turned out to be the grim reaper! YIKES......also turns out that he was proud of his artwork, he had 87 tattoos on his body.

I think a few tats are tasteful...even considered works of art...depending on placement and taste. 87 tats...is trashy!

That implies that a billboard cannot be a surface on which art is created. Why so? If a reproduction of, say, Picasso's Guernica were to be enlarged and displayed on a billboard, would that automatically take the painting right out of the "art" category?

Or, perhaps more to the point, why couldn't an artist choose to create a work on a billboard rather than on a canvas (or whatever) in his/her studio?

My dad came right out and told me that he thougt tattoos were tacky. Right after he saw my second tattoo. Ah, gotta love parents.