Exhibition-research "Tattoo" Automatic translate

The exhibition was designed and implemented by the Museum on the Branly embankment in Paris.

Exhibition curators: Ann and Julien (HEY! Modern Art and Pop Culture)

Curators of the exhibition at the Pushkin Museum. A.S. Pushkin: Varvara Shkermeneva, Deputy Head of the Exhibition Organization Department, Alexandra Savenkova, Leading Specialist in Exhibition and Exhibition Activities

The composition of the exhibition is about 200 works: painting, graphics, photography, sculpture, objects of traditional and decorative art, archival and ethnographic materials.

Participating museums: Museum on the Branly Embankment named after Jacques Chirac, Pushkin Museum im. A.S. Pushkin, State Hermitage Museum, Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography Peter the Great Russian Academy of Sciences (Kunstkamera), State Historical Museum, Russian State Library, as well as Vima Delvoy Studio, artist Fabio Viale and private collections

The State Museum of Fine Arts named after A.S. Pushkin together with the Paris Museum on the Branly Embankment named after Jacques Chirac presents an exhibition project "Tattoo" dedicated to the art of tattooing. The exposition will include about 200 works of large-scale chronological and geographical coverage, revealing the history of this phenomenon. Previously, the project was successfully presented in various museums around the world (the Jacques Chirac Branly Museum, Royal Ontario Museum, Field Museum of Natural History, Los Angeles Natural History Museum, Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts). The Moscow show will be supplemented with objects of decorative and applied art from Russian museums and private collections.

The exhibition will tell about the stages of tattoo development in different regions of the world on the example of various materials: from objects of traditional art to works of modern artists. The works of today’s active tattoo artists will be shown on voluminous silicone models created specifically for the exhibition - casts from parts of the body of real people. Among the artists who completed the tattoo projects are leading contemporary masters from around the world: Philip Liu, Henk Schiffmacher, Jack Rudy, Guy Atchison, Alex Binny, Dr. Lacra, Tin-Tin, Paul Booth, Horiyoshi III, Leo Sulueta and others.

Exhibition curators Ann and Julien / HEY! Modern Art and Pop Culture - connoisseurs of the history of tattoos. Within the framework of the HEY platform they founded!.. they explore the phenomena of mass, elite and marginal cultures and their mutual influence, devoting various projects to them. One of them is the Tatu exhibition, which was first shown in 2014 at the Museum on the Branly Embankment and has become a landmark today.

Having gone from traditional bodily practice to an integral part of modern visual culture, the tattoo has long earned a museum comprehension. Taking this project, the Pushkin Museum to them. A.S. Pushkin realizes his mission not only as a museum of fine art, but also as a museum of the history of civilizations. The exhibition, which the Moscow audience will see, contains additional sections, it is significantly supplemented by works of fine art from Russian museum and private collections and talks about the phenomenon of tattoos in the broad context of cultural history. Presenting more than 3,000-year history of one of the most ancient practices of body modification, an exhibition-research will tell about the variety of forms and functions of a tattoo, about their transformations under the influence of various circumstances, and about the significance of a tattoo in modern culture.

Archaeological finds indicate that the custom of tattooing is rooted in antiquity. Ancient Egyptian civilization is one of the earliest examples. The exhibition will show a spoon in the shape of a floating girl with a lotus flower from the period of the New Kingdom (XIV century BC). The exhibit, which is well known to the Russian audience, will be presented in a new light: few know that a tattoo in the form of the figure of the god Bes is depicted on the girl’s hips.

A special section of the exhibition will be devoted to the tattoo of the indigenous peoples of Oceania, where this tradition existed and developed over the centuries until the arrival of Europeans in the middle of the XIX century, having achieved incredible complexity of content and form. The drawing or ornament of the tattoo, as well as the area of ​​application to the body, were selected depending on the gender of the person, social status, life stage. The modern page for the development of tattoos in the Marquesas Islands is represented by the works of Russian artist from St. Petersburg Dmitry Babakhin, who is engaged in the study and historical reconstruction of this cultural tradition. In all sections that tell about the art of tattooing in Oceania, in addition to ethnographic materials, ritual objects and devices for applying a tattoo, silicone models will be shown, decorated with works by local contemporary tattoo artists as well.

The tattoo was especially developed in Japan. Representatives of the Ainu people living in Hokkaido were characterized by tattoos resembling ribbons around the lips, on the forearms and the back of the hand. Tattoo served as an element of the rite of initiation. This tradition reached its peak in Japan during the Edo period (1603–1868). In the XVII century, tattoos were worn mainly by men who usually worked with a naked torso: builders, fishermen, etc. For the upper class, for example, warriors, drawings on the body were considered an unworthy decoration. In addition, during the Edo period, a tattoo was used to punish criminals who were tattooed on their face and hands, visible parts of the body. Despite the fact that the tattoo in Japan existed only in certain social layers, it received a unique form of large figurative works covering large areas of the skin. By the first third of the 19th century, professional tattooists appeared in Japan, who in their works were inspired by engravings from the Ukiyo-e school. Tattoos covering the entire body appeared precisely under the influence of the art of ukiyo-e artists, engravings which will also be presented at the exhibition.

Several sections are devoted to the phenomenon of tattoos in Europe and America. If we talk about European tradition, then in ancient Greece and ancient Rome, tattoos were used as punishment: they branded defeated enemies. In the Roman Empire, stigmatized slaves, gladiators and early Christians. At the same time, ancient Oecumene was inhabited by ethnic groups, where the tattoo served the opposite purposes: among the Picts, Celts and Britons it was a sign of distinction, of high origin.

As geographical boundaries expanded and colonial development of distant lands took place, two parallel processes took place: the direct participants in sea voyages, getting acquainted with the tattoos of the natives, kept the same on their memory, and the expedition leaders studied wearable drawings as an ethnographic curiosity, made sketches and descriptions. In Europe since the end of the XVII century, travelers brought from distant countries tattooed "savages" for display to the public.

All tribes of the North American Indians, from Inuit to the Cree tribes, practiced the custom of tattooing, but with the advent of European colonists, their culture gradually became confined to the boundaries of reservations. With the completion of colonization, the tattoo in the United States developed in isolation from the traditions of the indigenous population, inspired by European designs, and by the first half of the 20th century, graphic features of the American tattoo (bright colors, bold contours) were formed. The approval of the tattoo in the United States was mainly due to sailors and soldiers. Already in the 1870s, the first tattoo parlors opened in New York, in 1891 an electric tattoo machine was patented, which provided new technical capabilities and gave impetus to the development of a new style. Until the middle of the 20th century, sailors and soldiers, as well as circus performers, continued to be the main tattoo carriers. But already in the 1960s, a new formation of tattoo artists appeared, often having an art education and positioning tattoo as art, as well as a new type of customers - rebellious youth. The era of the revival of the tattoo and its gradual exit from the field of marginal culture begins.

In Russia, a tattoo has also developed for a long time within closed communities, having received the greatest distribution in the criminal environment. By the end of the 20th century, the ubiquitous presence of criminal tattoos among representatives of this world gradually came to naught, prisoners’ tattoos became part of the international style, and the semantic boundaries of images became more mobile. The exhibition will show photographs of Sergei Vasiliev, who visited places of detention in the 1970s and 1990s, capturing the tradition of Russian criminal tattooing in all its diversity.

Today, the figurative language of the tattoo is actively used by modern artists. The Pushkin Museum to them. A.S. Pushkin will present the works of the Belgian Wim Delvoy and the Italian Fabio Viale. Choosing a tattoo as one of the artistic techniques, Delvoy and Viale use a wide range of socio-cultural meanings and the associations it invokes. Italian sculptor Fabio Viale works with such noble natural material as Carrara marble. Reproducing antique sculptures, Viale covers their snow-white surface with drawings of Russian criminal tattoos, as well as Japanese-style tattoos. The exhibition will include three sculptures by Fabio Viale and twelve works by Wim Delvoy.

At the end of the twentieth century, tattoo artists coined the term “tattoo artist”, thereby translating their work from a craft dimension into an artistic one and rejecting the distinction between “high” elitist and mass art. Having developed its own visual language, the tattoo gradually went beyond closed systems and became part of modern culture.

A special edition has been issued for the exhibition, and an educational program has been prepared, within the framework of which lectures will be given by tattoo artists - exhibitors Henk Schiffmacher and Dmitry Babakhin.