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Convicts, blue bloods, seamen, and circus
freaks; Pacific Islanders, Arctic dwellers, and ancient Egyptians: the
historical list of the tattooed is long and winding. Continually reinvented
in each time and place, the tattoo reveals a consistent paradoxthe
impulse to create an indelible mark on that most transient of canvases,
the human body. The permanent ink of tattoo can express bravery, creativity,
spiritual awakening, or defianceand sometimes, all of these things
simultaneously.
According to Tattoo History: A Source Book,edited
by Steve Gilbert 52, injecting pigment into the skin for lifelong
adornment has been identified as an active practice of many cultures.
Archeological sites in Europe have yielded instruments believed to be
used for tattooing during the Upper Paleolithic period, and mummies unearthed
in such distinct locales as Egypt, Siberia, and Peru feature various marks
of tattoo. In the classical era the Greeks and Romans tattooed their slaves
and criminals, and documented the fierce tattoos of Britons, Gauls, Goths,
and other barbarians. As Christendom grew stronger, though, tattooing
increasingly fell out of favor. Pope Hadrian I banned the practice in
787, sending Western tattoo in to an eclipse that would last for almost
a thousand years.
Meanwhile, in the kinder climate of the South Seas, tattoo was enjoying
a golden age. The most highly developed expression of the art form in
the ancient world, Polynesian tattoo varied from island to island but
was characterized by geometrical designs that covered the entire body
like intricate black lace. Performed with crude implements and natural
pigments, the process was slow and excruciating, yet was experienced as
a desirable passage to adulthood and displayed with great pride. Captain
James Cooks expeditions to the South Pacific in the late eighteenth
century helped create European awareness of this practice, naming it henceforth
in English after the Tahitian word tatou.
"Tattooing
is a kick-ass business. Its excitingit gets your
adrenaline going, like performing onstage. Its difficult
and stressful, and that makes it interesting".
While this sounds like it would come from a current Reedie immersed
in the neo-tribal, body-adorned counterculture, it actually
comes from the ranks of Reeds post-WWII generation.
Steve Gilbert 52 first explored the seductive world of
tattooing as a Portland teenager. Too young to enter the waterfront
shop of local tattooist Sailor George Fosdick, he pressed his
nose against the window and soaked in the salty ambiance. On
the walls were beautiful drawings of sailing ships, anchors,
roses, dragons, eagles, snakes, and naked women. The whole scene
seemed at once dangerous and fascinating, he remembers.
The images on the wall spoke to me of travel, adventure,
danger, and sex. In my impressionable young mind tattooing became
indelibly associated with these things.
At Reed Gilbert pursued a combined degree from Reed and the
Museum Art School, writing his thesis on woodcarving. Later,
a stint in the Army Medical Corps led to a notable career in
medical illustration on the faculty of the University of Toronto.
The seven pictorial anatomy books that Gilbert has written and
illustrated since the 1960s are widely used reference works
by students of anatomy throughout the world. Yet the world of
tattoo beckoned, and in the early 1970s Gilbert traveled to
Japan to study tebori, the centuries-old Asian method of tattooing
by hand. Currently, as a resident tattoo artist at the Abstract
Tattoo Studio in Toronto, he offers clients historically based
designs using both modern and traditional techniques.
A glimpse into Gilberts tattoo portfolio reveals a subtle
and dynamic aesthetic visionin one photo, a crimson carp
swims sinuously through water down a womans back; in another,
a fantastic beast first discovered on an Iron Age mummy now
adorns a living shoulder.
Last year Gilbert edited Tattoo History: A Source Book,
a collection of historical accounts of tattooing from a range
of observers, including explorers, physicians, criminologists,
anthropologists, and tattoo artists. Gilbert attributes the
recent renaissance of tattooevidenced in a plethora of
websites, publications, and conferencesto the same forces
that have always served to advance this unique art form.
For his part, when he visited Washington, D.C., in May to address
a medical conference on the history of embryology, Gilbert offered
tattoos to interested fellow attendees. Perhaps an artfully
placed griffin or two might be in order at his 50th Reed reunion
in 2002? |
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In Japan tattoo evolved from a method first used
to mark prisoners into an aesthetically complex practice shaped by other
trends in the visual arts. The eighteenth century gave birth to various
expressions of Japanese popular culture, including sumo wrestling, Kabuki
theatre, and ukiyo-e wood block printsthe pictures of the
floating world that illustrated popular novels and plays of the
day. When the Chinese novel Suikoden was translated into Japanese,
its story of a band of outlaws fighting corruption captured the national
imagination and helped promote tattooing in the bargain. Leading ukiyo-e
artist Utagawa Kuniyoshi created the definitive illustrations of the novel,
each featuring one of the heroes elaborately tattooed with emblems of
his personality, such as flowers, dragons, or tigers. Widely available,
these images invoked a popular demand for tattoo in spite of official
prohibitions against it.
Ukiyo-e
was also the source of the artwork that Japanese tattooists adapted for
their work and passed on from generation to generation. The hallmark of
traditional Japanese tattooing remains its use of a unified full color
design covering the back, chest, arms, or legs. Each portion of the image
is associated with traits such as courage or loyalty. Rather than simply
placing a static image on the human body, Japanese tattoo strives to reflect
the dynamic connection between the person and his chosen symbols.
The Polynesian and Japanese threads of tattoo converged
in nineteenth-century England, where tattooing became more popular than
anywhere else in Europe. Visits to the South Pacific taught English sailors
the basic trade, and many came back to set up shop in English seaports,
while officers and dignitaries traveled to Japan to be tattooed by the masters
at work there. The Prince of Wales (later Edward II) not only received a
Japanese tattoo but also later sent his two sons to Japan to be decorated
by the same artist. His example encouraged other European royalty and socialites
to go under the needle, and a brief tattoo fad spread among the elite in
1890s England and America. Soon enough, however, the aristocratic craze
faded and tattoo regained its slightly unsavory reputation. |
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