![]() You can’t stick a live body in a museum for two months.” “There are understandable problems with showing it. “Is it fine art or fashion? Design or folk art?” Mifflin asked. Still, the tattoo industry is set apart from other creative industries, perhaps because of its mass appeal and living canvas. “They don’t define individuals as a type anymore.” “It is less meaningful as a gesture that defines you as countercultural or subversive in a way,” Mifflin said. Arguably, tattoos are no longer a symbol of anything in themselves, just as oil paintings or sculptures represent the subjects and scenes they depict.įew would argue that a subculture doesn’t exist in the tattoo world, but the vast majority of the tattooed masses - the 40 percent under 40 - resemble amateur art lovers or collectors who hang watercolors in their living rooms. Americans of different races, ethnicities, and socioeconomic classes have taken to tattoos of all styles, price points and sizes, with custom work selling for thousands of dollars. And according to Mifflin, in 2012, tattooed women outnumbered men for the first time. Television shows such as “ Miami Ink” and “ America’s Worst Tattoos” have made the craft ever more popular, even if remorse sometimes leads to removal. Though there are no official numbers, some estimates say there are 15,000 to 20,000 tattoo shops in the country. In 2010, the Pew Research Center found that a third of Americans age 18 to 25 have a tattoo, and about 40 percent of Americans ages 26 to 40 have at least one. Since the 1970s, tattooing has grown into a $2 billion industry in the United States. Still, tattoo artists are basking in the rise of their craft. there’s a class bias at play in that arena.” “I would say tattooing is considered an art form everywhere except in the art world. “In the mainstream world, the value of tattoo art, as folk art and fine art is recognized,” said Margot Mifflin, author of “ Bodies of Subversion,” whose third edition was published in January. ![]() Indeed, there are movements in the craft, celebrated on the pages of coffee table books and blogs, that helped tattoo art creep into the art world via the usual drivers of recognition - talent, popularity, even lawsuits. Rudy wasn’t called an artist in 1975, but that’s what people call him now, along with a “godfather of black and grey style,” a sort of chiaroscuro technique in tattoo art. when tattoos were the mark of sailors or Marines, of which he was one. Rudy remembers back when there were only four tattoo parlors in East L.A. There are owners of tattoo shops who don’t even have tattoos. “But, oh, the things that I’ve seen,” Rudy trails off. “Everyone knows everyone, we recognize each other’s work,” said California-based Jack Rudy, 59, an icon of the tattoo industry who started tattooing at Goodtime Charlie’s Tattooland in East Los Angeles in 1975. And although over 160 tattoo artists convened to drill ink into torsos and limbs, the 2013 DC Tattoo Expo felt more like a small-town summer arts festival than a national convention. There was no panic or indecision inside the ballroom at the Crystal Gateway Marriott in Arlington these attendees were not amateurs, but expert collectors searching for new acquisitions. Crystal City was abuzz - bzzzzzz - bzzzzzz - with hundreds of hand-held tattoo machines grinding away at fresh flesh.
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