A history of tattoos from an ancient iceman to Dennis Rodman

One of the most stubborn misconceptions about tattooing is that it was born in Polynesia and imported to the West by Captain Cook in 1768, then reached the masses over the next century, settling into military and criminal subcultures until its resurrection at the end. of the 20th century. in the middle class. Not only is it false but it also overshadows a much broader and more complex global heritage.

“Painted People: 5,000 Years of Tattooed History, from Sailors and Socialites to Mummies and Kings” by Matt Lodder brings that truth to life in 21 fascinating stories. Lodder, a scholar of tattoo history, does not defend the art or legitimacy of tattoos, but rather shows, in lively and accessible language, how they serve as entry points to so many aspects of culture: history and anthropology, sports and fashion. , war and medicine. Lodder examines its material and spiritual origins, as well as its cultural impact.

“I want to show you that tattooing connects us across historical time and geographic space, revealing details about the human experience in the process,” he writes.

Although organized by period, from the ancient world to the new millennium, “Painted People” is not a chronology. Tattoo history is not linear and its timelines are always changing.

The book begins with the story of Ötzi, one of the oldest known tattooed humans, whose more than 5,000-year-old body was found preserved in the Italian Alps in 1991. It also details the recent discovery of between 3,000 and 5,000 years old. year-old tattoo tools in Tennessee, which set the origins of North American tattooing back a full millennium.

Both cases present tantalizing mysteries: Because most of Ötzi's dozens of abstract tattoos appear in places where only a right-handed person could reach, he may have tattooed himself. And when chiseled turkey bones were unearthed on Tennessee lands once inhabited by the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Shawnee and Yuchi peoples, archaeologists weren't sure whether they were for tattoos, medicinal uses or leather work. In what Lodder calls “an act of gonzo archaeology,” the scientists carved their own needles from turkey bones, dipped them in ink, tattooed them, and concluded, based on a microscopic examination of their “wear patterns,” that ancient needles could only have been used for tattooing.

(Courtesy of HarperCollins)

“Painted People” It's such a solid mix that you can dive anywhere and find something surprising: artist Lucian Freud tattooing swallows on supermodel Kate Moss; a Tang-era Chinese text describing a peacock gallbladder used as tattoo ink; North Korean prisoners of war forcibly branded with anti-communist slogans; Tattoos of Christian and Islamic pilgrimages thriving in 16th century Jerusalem; and, in a spasm of Cold War anxiety, Indiana schoolchildren tattooed their blood type under their left armpit, just as Nazi soldiers had done during World War II. The location, Lodder explains, was “less likely to suffer severe burns or cuts from flying debris.”

Not all stories involve blood and ink: In 1929, following a tattoo craze among young people in the United States and Britain, designer Elsa Schiaparelli created custom swimsuits patterned from a series of copied classic tattoos, she said, “ of the manly breasts of French sailors.” Woven in fabric the color of “sunburn,” the garments made bathers appear almost naked except for the mermaids and pierced hearts that hugged their torsos. “The hypermasculine associations of tattooing” fit the moment, Lodder writes, “as androgyny and youthism had become “de rigueur.”

Like many folk arts and indigenous practices, Lodder says, tattoos tend to be fundamentally “conservative, preserving images and iconography for centuries, if not millennia…they often quickly and directly communicate rather basic and universal emotions about fear.” , hope and family ties.” Even personalized tattoos in the West, she notes, “almost inevitably” signify a group rather than an individual identity.

1990s NBA star Dennis Rodman, on the other hand, used his ink (along with his piercings, dresses, and Technicolor hair) to mark himself as “a true individual in a deeply conservative culture.” Like soldiers and convicts whose individual identities are disguised by uniforms, athletes have few options for creative self-expression. But the exposed skin of basketball players provided an attractive public canvas that Rodman filled with tattoos, inspiring generations of athletes to do the same. His passion for the art form also helped him integrate into the white-dominated world of tattooing, where for too long black clients had been told that his skin was too dark to carry legible designs.

When Rodman sued a company that sold T-shirts that imitated his tattooed torso, he foreshadowed a 21st-century tattoo problem: fair use. The appearance of custom tattoo designs in movies, fashion, and video games has been legally challenged. But, Lodder asks, if a finished tattoo itself infringes a copyright, how can a “cease and desist” order be enforced? Likewise, what are the legal implications of a hacked numerical decryption code tattooed on a man's body and then photographed and shared online? Although tattooing has changed little technically since ancient times (aside from the invention of the tattoo machine in the 19th century), modern technology is imbuing it with thorny new implications.

Tattoo artist Ed Hardy once said that tattoos are like “little vents” in the psyche of the wearer. Lodder presents them as portals to entire towns. Some of his practices were canceled by colonialism; others, preserved in ice as Ötzi was, are dissolving with melting permafrost, taking with them the visual clues to ancient cosmologies. Deeply researched and elegantly written, “Painted People” is a moving and entertaining tribute to the people (and towns) behind this under-examined medium.

Margot Mifflin is a professor at the City University of New York and author of “The Blue Tattoo: The Life of Olive Oatman.”