Tattoos Are Now Finding Their Acceptance in the Art World

Finally, in the 21st-century tattoos have stopped becoming a symbol of silent rebellion, and subculture. For years people have held a scandalous and condescending view of tattoos and those who choose to get those tattoos on them. There has been a statistic that now roughly one in five Americans proudly sport a tattoo, and that rate has grown when it comes to Millennials. Popular tattooists are now amassing millions of followers and billions of views on photo-sharing social media site called Instagram. Also, the stigma against tattoos in the workplace has slowly started to fade away in many parts of the country. However, there is one major sign that tattoos are becoming more acceptable in different parts of the world, and that is their public display within high-art tattoo auctions and museum exhibitions.

Collections of images made by tattoo artists have been sold for several bucks, and they have been displayed in some of the most renowned art galleries. In a lot of ways, the tattoos are fundamentally at odds with the business model of the fine arts world, which is highly based on selling, buying, and displaying objects. However, yet it seems almost the tattoos rise to fame is inevitable, considering how a lot of the institutions recognize the value of this subversive art form.

Tattoos have been, to some extent, interesting to the art world because they have been given this outsider status. People, previously, would consider tattoos to be prison art or the art of the insane. It was a self-taught artist for many, and so those within the art community would look down upon it or would use these factors to knock down the art form. However, that is not a new notion. There has always been an art form within the artistic history that people were always adverse to. For example, woodblock painting, that is now a key influence in Japanese tattooing, was once not considered museum-worthy at all. However, now almost every museum you go into will have something that is related to woodblock printing.

There are many things that have kept the tattoo world and the fine arts world at odds with each. There have been several reasons, other than tattoos being incorrectly considered something that only prisoners and criminals get done. The problem with tattoos is that they cannot be preserved and put up on display. Tattoos cannot be encased in glass or within a frame to be shown to the art community. They are etched on the owner’s skin, and it goes with them when they die. Other than that tattoo artists are not able to be linked with their work because once the tattoo has been completed and the client walks out the door, the artist is, in a way disassociated with the work.

One such tattooist is Evaldas Gulbinas. The European fine-artist and tattooist is one of the topmost people in his field who have been working diligently for three years to establish tattoos as an art form. He creates mixed media artworks, and has also been featured in Skin Deep Tattoos, Creates Magazine, and total tattoo. His work has been acknowledged worldwide and has also been exhibited in many famous galleries.