Marks on the Vulnerable Body (original) (raw)

Parallel Lines / Between Arcadia and the Circus - Portraits of tattooed bodies in the 19TH and the beginning of the 20TH Century.

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.

Tattoos in Psychodermatology

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...

Marks of Transgression

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.

tattooed body in terms of 20th century philosophy

tattooed body in terms of 20th century philosophy

The article is dedicated to the philosophical interpretation of the tattooed body and the practices of tattooing in modern (present-day???) Western culture. It investigates tattoo regarding leading movements of 20 th century philosophy -phenomenology and existentialism. It provides a survey of completely new attitude towards human body, which was formed in course of these movements, and explanation of practice of tattoo in terms phenomenology and existentialism. The article displays the wish of getting tattooed through the anthropological conception of human as an artificial being, which seeks standing out against the nature, in this way particularly. It also shows how tattoo styles can illustrate trends of contemporary philosophy and intellectual and spiritual search of western people.

A life less ordinary: analysis of the uniquely preserved tattooed dermal remains of an individual from 19th century France

Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences, 2021

Anthropologies of the Body' often view the human form as a sort of text, onto which meanings and experiences are inscribed during people's lives, rendering the body effectively as an artefact of material culture. Such 'inscription' is generally metaphorical; however, in the case of tattooing, aspects of the way people wish to be perceived are quite literally inscribed upon the body. The current article presents analysis of an unusual 'artefact' in the form of the major anterior portion of the preserved, tattooed skin of an adult male. The skin's provenance was previously unknown, as was the reason why he had been subject to such treatment after death. The current project has progressed towards resolving these issues using multiple approaches, including CT scanning, multispectral light sources, infrared reflectography and spectroscopic dating. The latter technique produced a date range of 1861 ±15 years for the wood on which the skin was mounted. Multispectral and infrared light examination made it possible to discern many of the tattooed motifs much more clearly. The images and text that were made visible suggested this man had been French and had probably spent time overseas, possibly in naval service. Towards the end of his life, he may have been imprisoned and the date '1883' was decipherable. The current analysis allowed the investigators to glean far more information than was initially expected, providing a considerably richer personal narrative of this individual through the content of his tattoos than is usually possible in biological anthropology.

The Perversion of the Scar

The perversion of the scar Catalog: Anat Propper Goldenberg's exhibition, 2010. Reflexions about the 'scar' and the fundamental difference between the creative process of a text or a painting (genetic criticism), about the scar as distinctiveness and as dissolving border. (Translated from French)