Thursday Post 9/18/08

Culture

“Analysis of the deviant aspects of tattooing is forsaken in these discussions, since the (tribal) groups studied share understandings of tattoos as symbols of culture, identity, and group pride...or what Brain [sic] called ‘putting on a new skin, a cultural, as opposed to a natural skin.’”
Atkinson, Michael. Tattooed: The Sociogenesis of Body Art. Buffalo: University of Toronto Press Incorporated, 2003.


Rubin, Arnold. Marks of Civilization. Los Angeles: Diane Publishing Co., 1988.

This collection of essays was collected and edited in the heat of the North American tattoo renaissance and has been considered one of the most comprehensive formal exhibitions on tattooing in tribal cultures. The purpose of this project was to inform Westerners about the persistence of this practice from a global-historical perspective. Based on UCLA’s “Art of the Body” symposium, which drew professionals in anthropology, art history, sociology, medicine, and folklore. The symposium intended to act as a global survey of permanent modifications of the structure and surface of the human body for aesthetic reasons. Eleven of the twelve papers from this symposium were combined with six later papers to create this book.
Arnold Rubin has a Bachelors in Architecture and a Ph.D. in Art History. He has held positions as Lecturer in the Department of Fine Arts at Indiana University and Associate Professor at UCLA. He was one of the first to investigate the relationship between tattoos and art, culture, psychology, sociology, and history.

This is relevant to my work not only because the process and experience of getting tattooed is a very cultural thing, but I am also using the tattoos as symbols to comment on different aspects of our culture. The idea of having a “cultural skin” is definitely taken into account in my work.