THE ART OF TATTOO

HISTORY
The oldest evidence of tattoos on mummies was found in one belonging to the Chinchorro Culture on the coast of Chile. In these are preserved existing tattoos dating from the year 2000 a. C. This tattoo consists of a thin mustache on the upper lip of an adult man. In 1991 a Neolithic mummy was found inside a glacier in the Ötztal Alps, with 57 tattoos on the back. This mummy is known as the "Ice Man", it is the human body with the oldest skin that has ever been found and its age varies according to different authors: Cate Lineberry, has calculated about 5,200 years old.

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"A tattoo becomes a work of art when the strokes and the final result are unique in what was captured, without a guide, without sketches, without planning anything. Only the idea agreed between the bearer and the tattoo artist."

If a person wants their tattoos to be art, then they are, "according to Cristian Petru Panaite, assistant curator at the New York Historical Society (NYHS). We face two opposing views that serve as an approach to know at what point a tattoo, however simple or complex it may be in its execution, becomes art.

It is art for the simple fact of being unique, born of the inspiration of two minds that together came to a single idea to make something unrepeatable in the world. Most artistic works work that way.

• The first vision refers to the creation from scratch of a design that may or may not contain a deep feeling for the artist and the bearer.

• The second idea about the tattoo as an artistic work responds to a more emotional feeling. It refers to the purely subjective feeling of the wearer: if for him his design responds to a need to have impregnated on the skin an image that represents an important event in his life, that will be enough to be considered a work of art.

There is a vital aspect to answer this question: works of art seek to be perpetuated for posterity. Tattoos have not yet achieved this action for obvious reasons: the death of their wearer. We can talk about a fleeting, passing art that will be enjoyed only a certain moment until extinction arrives. Works of art such as sculpture, painting, music or cinema have the means to withstand the passage of time and survive the death of their creators. By the fact of being condemned to the disappearance, the tattoos do not achieve the status of artistic works?