Will tattoos finally be accepted as art?

Possessed of ancient roots, tattoos have in recent years gone from being taboo to part of the social fabric. The next step? Their acceptance as art works that can even outlive their owners, writes Thomas Hobbs.

"When I started out tattoos were seen as something for the outcasts and rebels," says Dr Woo (real name Brian Woo), a prominent LA-based tattoo artist with 1.8 million Instagram followers and a high-profile clientele that includes Justin Bieber, Miley Cyrus and Drake. "I come from a very traditional immigrant Asian family, so my parents weren't too buzzed when their son chose this career path."

Yet 41-year-old Woo, whose prices begin at $2,500 (£2,066), insists body ink no longer carries the same negative connotations.

"I get lawyers, doctors, politicians, kids celebrating their 18th birthdays, grandparents… it's all walks of life coming into my studio," he explains.

"There was a time not too long ago where I was the only one in the room with a tattoo, but in 2022 you're looked at funny if you don't have one. Now my parents are okay with this job."

Woo's comments reflect the cultural ubiquity tattoos are currently enjoying. A 2015 YouGov poll suggested one-fifth of British adults had tattoos, while the most recent figures from Ipsos show that 30% of all Americans have at least one on their bodies (a figure that rises to 40% among the under-35s). What once might have been perceived as a subculture more associated with nomadic sailors and biker gangs than the middle classes is now an omnipresent mainstream force and $3bn-a-year industry.

It seems to be a rite of passage for the world's biggest pop stars (Post Malone, Billie Eilish) and athletes (LeBron James, Lionel Messi) to have tattoos etched all over their bodies and faces, inspiring fans to do the same. Major fashion houses utilise famous tattooed celebrities to add an edge to their branding (the heavily tatted comedian Pete Davidson is the current global face of H&M); Virgin Atlantic allows staff to proudly show off their sleeves during long-haul flights; and the US army has relaxed historic rules prohibiting visible tattoos on troops, citing "changing social norms" as a reason.

"It's undeniable how visible tattooing is right now," explains Matt Lodder, a senior lecturer in Art at the University of Essex who specialises in the history of tattoos. "It is a bigger deal culturally than it's ever been."

He continues: "The other day someone sent me an advertising leaflet from the British Post Office, which showed the father of a toddler with a visible full sleeve. There was a time where a relatively conservative organisation like the Post Office doing that would have created a backlash. Now it's accepted as progressive."

However, Lodder insists it's important we frame tattoos as a historic "medium" rather than a "phenomenon", with the media often downplaying the artform's heritage by only narrowing in on the buzz of more recent popularity. To truly understand the trajectory of tattoos, he says we must dig deep into the history. "Western tattooing has been a commodity-based art form for only about 140 years," he explains, suggesting that one of the key drivers behind its commercialisation in the UK was King George V, who got a "desirable" tattoo of a dragon on his arm during a trip to Japan as a teenager in 1881. Conversely, though, he adds, "we also have to remember there's physical evidence of tattooing that dates all the way back to 3250 BC."

Ancient roots

Lodder is referring to Ötzi, a European Tyrolean Iceman whose frozen body was preserved beneath an Alpine glacier along the Austrian-Italian border, before finally being discovered by a perplexed German couple 5,300 years later during their walking holiday in the Alps. Ötzi had 61 tattoos across his body, with the tattoos (which were primarily sets of horizontal and vertical lines) thought to have had a therapeutic purpose akin to acupuncture – since they tended to be clustered around Ötzi's lower back and joints, areas where anthropologists say the Iceman was suffering from degenerative pains and aches.  

Other ancient corpses have revealed even more intricate designs. The "Gebelein Man", who has been on display in the British Museum for more than 100 years, has a tattoo of an interlocking sheep and bull on his arm. The naturally mummified corpse dates back to Ancient Egypt's Predynastic period around 5,000 years ago, with the tattoos applied permanently under the skin using a carbon-based substance [experts believe it was likely some type of soot]. There's also evidence that the women of Ancient Egypt had tattoos, with experts speculating that they were carved into the skin so that the gods would protect their babies during pregnancy. The 1891 discovery of Amunet, a priestess of the goddess Hathor at Thebes, showed extensive tattooing across the mummified corpse's abdominal region.

A heavily-tattooed female warrior priestess dubbed the "Princess of Ukok" was discovered by archaeologists in the Altai Mountains – which run through Russia, China, Mongolia and Kazakhstan – back in 1993. The discovery of this 2,500-year-old corpse was particularly significant due to the pristine preservation of the skin and a torso featuring beautifully sophisticated illustrations of mythical beasts, including the antlers of a Capricorn.

Believed to be 25 when she died, the princess was one of the Pazyryks, a Scythian-era tribe that saw body tattoos as a marker of social status, and something that would make it easier for them to be located by loved ones in the afterlife. All these discoveries, according to Lodder, completely shatter the notion that tattooing is somehow a new "trend" – if anything, it is one of the oldest artforms on record.

"The current best evidence suggests tattoos go back 45,000 years," he adds. "That's when human beings developed symbolic and communicative visual behaviour. The urge to communicate stories and desires by tattooing something on our skin has long been a basic human need."

But if tattoos have long been a prized adornment for some, they have also served as a cruel kind of branding. In the ancient Greco-Roman world, tattoos were a mark of punishment and shame, forcibly given to convicts and sex workers. This was a horrific practice that persisted long after the Roman Empire ended, continuing through to America's slave trade and the Holocaust. But despite this, tattoos simultaneously remained an attractive lure for society's elite.

The allure of celebrity

In author Margot Mifflin's brilliant book Bodies of Subversion: A Secret History of Women and Tattoo, she dissects how high society women of the 19th Century in Europe and United States would get tattoos on their feet and upper arms; places easily hidden by clothing. One of the first professional female tattoo artists in the US was Maud Wagner, who learned from her husband, and began work in 1907. Jessie Knight, who started professionally in 1921, was perhaps Wagner's equivalent in the UK.

For Mifflin, tattoos have always carried counter-culture values for women. "Tattooing meant women could do what they wanted with their own bodies," she explains. "It was different for women to men, because tattooed women were directly interfering with nature in a way history had previously forbidden. It was a chance for them to rewrite their bodies."

Mifflin says the "dark shadow" of World War Two – where Jewish prisoners of war were tattooed and numbered by their Nazi capturers during the genocidal murder of the Holocaust – led to a decline in people wanting to get body ink. But by the 1960s, the tide was changing again, something she credits in part to the influence of late rock 'n' roll legend Janis Joplin. "Janis had this Florentine bracelet tattooed on her wrist, which was completely visible, and also a heart above her breast," explains Mifflin.

"She really was this transitional figure who helped tattoos become an alluring mainstream thing. [New York] artist and tattooist Ruth Marten, who blurred the lines between tattoos and the art world, also helped to destroy some of the negative connotations, repositioning tattoos as a rich artform."

The veteran Mister Cartoon (real name Mark Machado) is one of the greatest living tattoo artists in the US. Working his way up from airbrushing lowrider cars and being a prolific graffiti tagger, the 52-year-old ended up tattooing some of pop culture's most important names including Beyoncé, Kobe Bryant, Snoop Dogg, Eminem, Dr Dre and 50 Cent. According to Cartoon, although Joplin was indeed a "transitionary" figure, hip-hop culture really helped solidify tattoos as a desirable practice for the masses.

"In my neighbourhood," the Los Angeles native recalls, "the tattoos you saw were typically done in prison cells. In my mom's head, she saw those heavily tattooed gangsters as the ones who made us Latinos look bad. But to me, they looked like the coolest people in the world."

"When inspiring figures like Eminem, 2Pac, and 50 Cent all got tattoos, the public wanted to follow," he continues. "All their tattoos were like mirrors to the pop culture, highlighting social issues and inspiring the underdogs to make something of themselves. If a rapper like Gucci Mane got a tattoo on his face, it showed he was all the way in, and that defiance was infectious."

One of Cartoon's greatest tattoos is the word "Southside", which he tatted across rap artist 50 Cent's back. It is an ode to the rapper's Southside Queens' neighbourhood, and it represents how 50's success meant he was quite literally carrying the hood on his shoulders, and showing anything was possible, even after being shot nine times. Cartoon interprets the Old English lettering aesthetic that he used to see tattooed on LA gang members torsos, and gives it a more grandiose feel by transporting it on to the flesh of a superstar. 

"For me it was always about getting the shady type of tattoos from my neighbourhood, which my mom feared were the mark of criminals, and taking them somewhere where they could be seen as luxurious and glamorous," Cartoon explains. "I wanted to really show their value. My mum is now sitting in a house that tattoos paid for, you know? I feel like I succeeded."

Fighting against art world snobbery

Despite this rich history, and tattoos' uniqueness as mobile artworks that walk around with somebody for the whole of their life, Cartoon says he still encounters snobbery. "If you go to art school and say you want to be a tattooist then they still look at it like a dishonest way to make a living," he says.

"We're creating art on moving flesh, which requires so much skill, while serving as therapists and marriage councillors to the people who sit in the chair. If you watch someone do a tattoo, and walk away from it thinking it's not art, then you're just a crazy art snob."

Even if snobbery still exists, Mifflin insists the art and tattoo worlds are converging more and more. She credits Mexican tattooist Dr Lakra (who has pioneered a macabre religion-fuelled visual style) and Belgium's Wim Delvoye (who has controversially tattooed pigs) as two recent figureheads who've helped bridge the gap between tattoos and fine art. Lodder, meanwhile, says Japanese tattooist Gakkin is bringing an "avant-garde" edge to the artform.