Commercial Tattooists and Their Professional Self-Understanding As Artists

Tattooing can be located at the intersection of body service work, craft and art. Therefore, tattooists constitute their professional identity from these occupational components to position themselves within the growing and competitive tattooing sector. In this context, the discourse of tattooing as an art is omnipresent, and the self-presentation as an artist is the most prominent among those who tattoo as their gainful work. However, a closer look reveals the diverse criteria and the heterogeneity of interpretations that qualify tattoos as artwork and their creators as (tattoo) artists.

Against this backdrop, this paper questions what notions of art tattooists have and investigates their self-understanding as artists. The data, which consists of autobiographical narrative interviews and ethnographic observations in tattoo parlours and at tattoo conventions in Germany, was analysed using the documentary method.

The analysis results show that tattooists either understand themselves as tattooing artists or as tattooists who developed into artists through their work. Four conceptualisations of tattooing as art were reconstructed: (1) By referring to the genie cult, outstanding artistic or technical skills such as portrait, realistic and naturalistic tattooing define tattooists as gifted artists. (2) Another understanding considers commercial tattooing as commission work, just as other artwork often is. (3) A further perspective regards (economic) success and reputation gained through tattoos that meet the customer’s taste as (an) art. (4) In contrast, the individualistic perspective argues that since there are no universal criteria for art, everybody can invoke this status because art develops in the eye of the beholder.

The conclusion points to the practical implications of these conceptualisations on the service for the client: Their skin is either seen as a canvas for the tattoo artist’s ‘coup de foudre’, a surface for the artist’s eternal inscription, or a work material that requires more artistic skills than paper.