Tattoo Art No 1
Showing posts with label art tattoo. Show all posts
Showing posts with label art tattoo. Show all posts
Tuesday, December 14, 2010
Monday, December 13, 2010
Tattoos in China and A Chinese Tattoos
Ever since seeing Beijing’s punk poster-boys Reflector at Xining’s Material Life Music Bar, I’ve been thinking an awful lot about tattoos. This Material Life Music Bar was full of inked Chinese and foreigners; it was the highest volume of tattoos I’d seen in a while and the inspiration for the following rant.
There are two topics I’ve been thinking about: i) Having Tattoos in China and ii) Getting Tattoos in Foreign Languages (especially Chinese or Tibetan).
Even though in recent times tattoos have become slightly more acceptable in the Chinese mainstream, tattoos still carry a social stigma. This article from China Daily showcases the growing trend of tattoos among China’s young people, but also hints at the slow-changing tattoo-wariness shared by the traditionally minded.
The wariness is easy to understand given the sordid history of tattoos in China. In his article “Street Scenes of Subalternity,”Michael R. Dutton explains some philosophical and historical background about why tattoos remain subversive in Chinese culture:
Dutton continues by describing how gangs of criminals adopted tattooing as a way to forge group identity and to “mark [themselves] outside the society.”
To sum up, tattoos have traditionally been the mark of outcasts and organized criminals. I’ve also heard it said that prostitutes also favor having tattoos, possibly as group identifiers or, more innocuously, as preferred ways for covering up unsightly scars.
Sunday, December 12, 2010
Saturday, December 11, 2010
The Infamous History of Yakuza Tattoos
A well executed Japanes tattoo (Horimono or Irezumi) is without peer in complexity and meaning. This traditional art form that has evolved in Japan from as long ago as 11,000 BC has gone through many iterations, the more recent of which is its association with organized crime in Japan – the Yakuza.
This association no doubt came about as tattooing evolved from a method of identifying criminals and possibly even the lower classes hundres of years ago to becoming fashionable among those same people – the exact people from whom the modern Yakuza evolved. As the evolution of attitudes continued, tatooing became an integral part of the underworld in Japan as far back as the 17th century. The true evolution of this fashion, however, goes back much further.
Wednesday, December 8, 2010
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