Body Art

Fleshy Canvas: The Aesthetics of Tattoo

by Tanya Rodriguez

Tattoos & Philosophy: I Ink, Therefore I am
(Philosophy For Everyone series)

I am co-authoring this paper with Kimberly Baltzer-Jaray.

http://tattooedphilosopher.wordpress.com/2010/11/02/future-publication-news/

Tattoos challenge traditional philosophy of art by demanding that we expand the core conceptions of aesthetic... more Tattoos challenge traditional philosophy of art by demanding that we expand the core conceptions of aesthetic experience, interpretation of meaning, and the judgment of beauty. To understand how tattoos express meaning, one must consider more than final product or pure form, for an illustrated body is more than just painted canvas. The tattoo is a dialogical art form that engages several elements: the artist, the subject, the subject’s body as canvas, as well as community, which serves as context and audience to the artwork.
Contrary to canonical western aesthetics, we argue that one is never a disinterested onlooker when approached by art; one is deeply affected, altered. The relationship art provides is ongoing and deep; it is filled with meaning. Tattoos invoke a unique kind of aesthetic experience in that they create a dialogue where understanding is constantly re-negotiated. In this paper, we apply the hermeneutical aesthetics of Hans-Georg Gadamer to the experience of tattoos, and consider feminist conceptions of beauty by Peg Brand and Marcia Muelder Eaton. Drawing upon the tradition of Kant and Hume, then breaking away from its commitments, we argue that tattoos can be deemed something of beauty and worthy of being considered art.

Extreme Performance and Installation from China

by Meiling Cheng

Slučaj Kapelica (The Kapelica Case)

by Dejan Grba

Razgovor sa Jurijem Krpanom, direktorom ljubljanske galerije Kapelica.
An interview with Jurij Krpan, the director of Kapelica Gallery in Ljubljana. In Serbian language.

The Myth of the Modern Primitive

by Matt Lodder

in 'RE/Reading RE/Search', special issue of the European Journal of American Culture, Volume 30:2. pp. 99-112

RE/Search Publications' 'Modern Primitives' (1989) changed countless lives, bringing what had been a localised and... more RE/Search Publications' 'Modern Primitives' (1989) changed countless lives, bringing what had been a localised and niche set of body modification practices, aesthetics and philosophies out of San Fransisco to a global audience, dominating scholarly and popular discourse around body modification subculture for more than a decade afterwards. The voice of Fakir Musafar, dominates the book. This paper argues that modern primitives as Fakir defines them never really existed (and never could have existed) in the terms he suggests, and address an important sub-strand within Modern Primitives almost entirely ignored by critics and commentators: contributors who do not frame their practice in "primitive" terms.

Body Art: Body Modification as Artistic Practice

by Matt Lodder

PhD Thesis, 2010.

This thesis is an investigation into the legitimacy and limits of the term “body art” in its vernacular sense, wherein... more This thesis is an investigation into the legitimacy and limits of the term “body art” in its vernacular sense, wherein it refers to methods of decorating or ornamenting the body, such as tattooing or piercing. Though the term is widely used and widely understood, it has rarely appeared in any writing which takes an explicitly arthistorical or art‐critical approach, and has never been subjected to any sustained analysis which uses the methodologies deployed by specialists when engaging with other forms of art. If tattooing and its coincident technologies are “body art”, they have not as yet been understood as such by art historians.

The arguments made over the course of this work thus amount to a case for the applicability of art‐historical and art‐theoretical methodologies to body modification practice. The thesis first establishes the existence of a rhetorical yet broadly undefended case for the artistic status of practices which alter the form of the body. This claim is to be found amongst both the contemporary subcultural body modification community and amongst plastic surgeons. With particular reference to theories of art and aesthetics by John Dewey, Richard Shusterman, and Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, the work investigates whether such claims are tenable. In light of these investigations, the thesis then presents a number of problems which immediately arise from such a claim – problems of authorship, ownership, objectivity and value – and attempts to resolve them through detailed analysis of a number of case‐studies.

(The full thesis can be downloaded from the British Library's EThos Service at http://ethos.bl.uk by searching "Lodder" or the thesis' persistent ID, 525734 - registration required)

The Fine Art of Tattooing

by Gemma Angel

A short descriptive account of my experience of tattooing a volunteer during my BA Fine Art Degree Show at the University of Leeds, 2004.

Tattoos, Piercings and Surgeries: Performing Culture in Body Art

by Samik Malla

Presented at the Conference on "The Body in Culture: Culture of the Body” organised by the Centre for English Studies at the School of Language, Literature and Culture Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, 3-4 March 2011

EXCERPT:

"I can observe my own body cut open, without suffering! … I can see to the heart of my lover;... more EXCERPT:

"I can observe my own body cut open, without suffering! … I can see to the heart of my lover; his splendid design has nothing to do with sickly sentimentalities... Darling, I love your spleen; I love your liver; I adore your pancreas, and the line of your femur excites me."

French body artist Orlan, in her Carnal Art Manifesto , writes thus. As part of her project titled The Reincarnation of Saint-Orlan, started in 1990, she underwent a series of plastic surgeries, to turn her face into a collage of parts imitated from various famous paintings, which were transmitted live while she lay conscious.

The human form has always decreed significant attention from the various forms of Art. Recent studies have reflected the changing perception of the body as not only the subject of Art but also its platform. With the rise of Carnal Art, the body itself has turned into a canvas, a site of creativity. To quote Tracey Warr, “the idea of the physical and the mental self as a stable and finite form has gradually eroded.” Tattoos, piercings, plastic surgeries, and paints have blurred the lines of what traditionally constituted Art and helped us perform our identities by exploring new terrains, challenging, often painfully, the culture of ‘aesthetics’ and ‘beauty’.

This paper explores the human anxiety for beautification and ornamentation of the body as an extension of the self, the cultural production of the identity and re-drawing of the lines of ‘Art’. It examines, in this context, how the seen culturally becomes obscene and how Body Art consciously performs more than resistance. Curiously then, celebrities can arguably re-invent themselves through Body Art and cruise their way back to the headlines constructing celebrity discourses. The paper examines how body modification in the form of clothing, tattooing, piercing and branding affects the cultures it draws from. It notes how Carnal Art can not only swing one to fame, as in Orlan’s case, but also transform a celebrity body into a site of art as well as recurrent media attention.

De huéspedes, parásitos y anfitriones. Las prótesis y el Net.Art

by Edwin Culp

Unpublished, Universidad de Barcelona, 2004

El concepto de cuerpo ha estado siempre lejos de ser una unidad objetiva y estable. Por un lado, su presencia está... more El concepto de cuerpo ha estado siempre lejos de ser una unidad objetiva y estable. Por un lado, su presencia está ligada a los diferentes momentos de la vida biológica (alimentación, crecimiento, enfermedad, muerte, etc.), haciéndonos incapaces de detener su transformación, de asirlo a un concepto. Por otro, en el cuerpo confluyen diferentes concepciones de una cultura, la idea de vida y muerte, la concepción del trabajo y las fiestas, los miedos más profundos. Su inmanente materialidad contrasta con sus múltiples cargas simbólicas.