Marks on the Vulnerable Body (original) (raw)
This Paper is oriented to the experiences of the body, its motion between the self and intercultural experiences and its representation in high and low culture. The explanation for a globalized aesthetic form of tattooing finds its roots at the very beginning of the 19th century. The clichés on the tattooed body as a criminal, a nomad body – the sailor, the prostitute, the murder – is, so my proposal- the result of the scientific discourse of the time, willing to understand the origin and cause of European Tattoo practice. As an extension to my work on the first descriptions of European tattooing, I would like to present the question of the first representations of tattooed bodies in European visual arts at the beginning of the modernity. The question of the representation of the tattooed body opens a range of portraits that respond to other categories than the rest of portraits of the time. The perception of the artist will be defined by the knowledge he possesses on this rare and “new” kind of human expressions for the European of the 19th Century. The presented continuity between the paintings I would like to discuss today concern not only the urgent comparative analyzes, but also a kind of development that should be pointed out. “Between Arcadia and the Circus: Portraiture of tattooed bodies in the 19th and 20th Century” therefore, is the temporal range I would like to call to the instances within the following representations of the tattooed body as a medium synchronized image-phenomena: For instance the end of painting as an academic art, and the beginning of tattooing as a normalized but subversive production, as well as the invention of the tattoo-machine, in 1891. The Portraits to be analyzed are: Omai, from Joshua Reynolds, 1778 // Poster of Captain Constantinus, at Folies-Bergère, around 1880 // Liebeskranke (Lovesick), from George Grosz, 1916// Suleika, from Otto Dix, 1920 // Egon Erwin Kisch, from Christian Schad, 1928.
Psych
Tattooing is a permanent form of body art applied onto the skin with a decorative ink, and it has been practiced from antiquity until today. The number of tattooed people is steadily increasing as tattoos have become popular all over the world, especially in Western countries. Tattoos display distinctive designs and images, from protective totems and tribal symbols to the names of loved or lost persons or strange figures, which are used as a means of self-expression. They are worn on the skin as a lifelong commitment, and everyone has their own reasons to become tattooed, whether they be simply esthetic or a proclamation of group identity. Tattoos are representations of one’s feelings, unconscious conflicts, and inner life onto the skin. The skin plays a major role in this representation and is involved in different ways in this process. This article aims to review the historical and psychoanalytical aspects of tattoos, the reasons for and against tattooing, medical and dermatologic...
Soviet criminal women and their experiences have been an understudied theme of the Soviet criminal history. A point of contact, we, modern observers, have with them is their tattoos recorded in police and NKVD files, drawings and photographs. These tattoos are charged with powerful symbolism, meaning and autobiographical references, which were all bound to the identity of the bearer. This dissertation looks at the self-representation of female criminals in their bodily markings as a discursive practice, which enabled them to resist societal stigmatizations and authoritative discourse, both of which relied on gender-biased and male-dominated conceptions of femininity.
On display: From the tattooed body to the museum of the self
Revue Esprit, 2022
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Derrida and Deleuze as Tattooed Savages
Tattooed Bodies, 2022
How do tattoos work as metaphors? Or more precisely: How do they work as philosophical metaphors on the philosophical and writerly body of Jacques Derrida and Gilles Deleuze (and Félix Guattari), philosophers close, if sometimes antagonistic, to a phenomenology conscious of the body (Merleau-Ponty), a philosophy of language preoccupied with inscriptions and traces, and to psychoanalysis? This chapter shows how, if tattoos and tattoo-like inscriptions have an inconspicuous yet significant place in their work, it is because of a shared preoccupation with the visual and desire, and consequently, with the death and pain inscribed within these dimensions. What makes this shared preoccupation or attention original in their work is that it focuses on the bodily inscription not only as an object of study but also as the act itself of writing philosophy in their own style. In other words, the tattoo(ing) metaphors in both of their corpora work as an idiomatic site of philosophical reflection on, and analysis of, the conceptual limits of the dyad immanence/transcendence, or what Jean-Luc Nancy calls a “transimmanence,” a site as canvas or page common to art and—at best—to philosophical literature as well.
The image of the body ‑face: The case of Franz Xaver Messerschmidt and Bill Viola
ABStrACt In this paper, I am predominantly interested in interpretations of emotional states portrayed in images of the face. In particular, the interpretations which have grown around the series of busts by Franz Xaver messerschmidt, as well as those which attempt to expound Bill Viola's video works. I will refer to aspects of physiognomy, artistic practices and aesthetics, in order to show what each of these tells us about our attitude to the body and emotions and what hap‑ pens to the body while a person is experiencing an emotion. my aim is to demonstrate how the act of depicting the body, regarded as a cognitive process in an artistic medium accompanied by a special kind of aesthetic experience, becomes a means of communication which is capable of conveying a universal message and of allowing us to define our attitude to the body.
Tattooing in Criminalistics and Forensics
Tattooing is a permanent injection of different color ink in the skin with the help of specially created needles. Mostly people are tattooed for aesthetic, ritual, customary, health and social reasons. In a symbolic sense, tattooing is something like dress without clothes-though, primarily in combination with clothing (on visible body parts). Removal remains visible on the skin, so it is more commonly used to mask a tattoo with a new tattoo. Though modern medicine increasingly allows for the most unpleasant tattoo removal, they are always visible to some extent because of their chemical composition and way of making. Introduction The interest in and the study of tattoos and tattooing has existed for centuries [1]. Although the interest has waxed and waned over time, it has spanned multiple disciplines from anthropology and archeology to criminology and forensic science to cultural heritage and medical sciences. The focus of the historical literature has varied over time, with research addressing such topics as symbolism and semiotics, social stratification, criminal behavior and punishment methods, religious and medical trends, and meaning and perception. Tattoos and tattooing are perhaps best described as enigmatic, where many disciplines have weighed in on the history, meaning, and perception, yet no interpretation has captured an all-encompassing, universally accepted understanding of the tattoo. Perhaps this task is futile; there will always be a subjective element to the tattoo which will always open to interpretation by the wearer, the observer, and the researcher.
Unprofessional tattoos in Bulgaria — psychological aspects
Journal of the European Academy of Dermatology and Venereology, 1995
Background People suffered many psychic traumas during the period of the communist rule which altered their perception of the outer world and of themselves. For many their skin became a place where their frustration could be expressed. Up to now the psychological aspects of tattoos in the countries from Eastern Europe have been decidedly understudied.