The Guardian reports on the opening of a new tattoo exhibition in Paris tracing our love of tattoos from Neolithic age to today.
Artistic advice was given by France’s tattooer-to-the-stars, a man called Tin-Tin, who counts Jean-Paul Gaultier, Marc Jacobs, Philippe Starck and Yannick Noah among his VIP clientele.
“Tattooing is part of the common heritage of most of humanity,” Julien said. “We wanted to do this exhibition for a long time because we feel it’s important to show that tattooing has a real history and is a pure product of humanity. There’s not a place in the world where mankind has been that has not used tattooing … It’s both artisan and artistic. In the past there was a fear of tattoos and people would hide them. Today attitudes have changed. People used to do it because they wanted to identify themselves as different to make a statement, but today it’s become fashionable and the opposite holds true. People want to be different so they don’t want tattoos.”
The fashion is moving away from portraiture and symbolism to abstract designs.
“It’s an art movement that’s developing and changing all the time,”
Julien said.
Tatoueurs, Tatoués runs from 6 May until 18 October
www.quaibranly.fr/tatoueurs
