Customizing the Body (PDF file) - Print My Tattoo

218 Notes to Chapter 5
and resulted in the hiring of UGA artists by choreographer Twyla Tharp to
create the backgrounds for her new ballet “Deuce Coupe” (Castleman,
1982: 119). Subsequently the work of graffiti writers was shown, among
other places, in the Razor Gallery, the Bank Street College of Education,
and Chicago’s Museum of Science and Industry and the NOGA received
funding from the New York State Council on the Arts (Castleman, 1982:
121–122, 128, 131, 133).
9. In his review of the UGA’S Razor Gallery show Peter Schjeldahl of the
New York Times wrote:
It is a pleasure to report that respectable standing and the “art”
context have not cowed most of the UGA artists. The show-off
ebullience of their work has, if anything been heightened by the
comforts of a studio situation. . . . For all their untutored crudities,
none of these (canvases) would do discredit to a collection of
contemporary art (emphasis added, quoted in Castleman, 1982:
122; see also Gardner, 1985; Rosenberg, 1972: 49–54).
10. The connections between graffiti and tattooing as disvalued modes
of cultural production are apparent in plates 138 and 173 of the San
Francisco Museum of Modern Art’s Aesthetics of Graffiti catalogue (1978).
Both show examples of these stigmatized works in combination.
Epilogue 2008
1. While it is less pronounced today, there has long been a geographical
divide in the tattoo world. The West Coast, and San Francisco in particular,
is arguably the center of artistic tattooing in the United States. It
is the home of some of the most prominent tattoo artists and tattoo collectors
in the world. From the San Francisco perspective, East Coast tattooing
has always been derivative and unsophisticated.
2. Needles come in three basic formats: rounds, flats, and magnums.
Tattoo needles are not hypodermic; rather they hold pigment in the spaces
between the points in clusters arranged either in circles (“rounds”), flat
rows (“flats”), or staggered rows (“magnums”).
3. The pain a recipient experiences is inversely related to the number of
needles an artist uses. The outline is substantially more painful than
shading, and magnums are substantially less painful than round configurations.
Some speculate that this is because magnums spread the sensation
out, making it more diffuse and therefore less intense. Also, magnums
cover more space with a single pass of the needle and, as a consequence,
cause less damage to the skin.
4. Knowledgeable participants in the tattoo world distinguish between
“tattooers” and “tattoo artists” using a variety of criteria. The central factor
is the amount of custom work the person in question provides. Of
course, artistic standards are also important, but they are less easy to