Tattooing and the artistic establishment

From the moment I began my studies at the San Carlos Faculty of Fine Arts in Valencia, I tried to win some recognition for tattooing from the artistic establishment, the establishment of Art with a capital A, the Academy. Sadly, this effort was all but futile. I soon realised that the institution, far more stale and paralysed than it pretended to be beneath its airs of modernity, had no interest whatsoever in accepting tattooing as an art form. Why? Partly because of the whiff of the back streets they still sensed about it, and probably because of tattooing's non-existent speculative market value.

This last aspect is one of the things that has always fascinated me: a form of art with no middlemen, no leeches, no gallery owners, no museums and no speculation, where artist and client agree directly on what and how much, nothing more. Unlike a painting or a sculpture, there is no possibility of speculative resale. We are probably looking at the first true example of popular art in all of history.

You have to be very short-sighted not to see that, once we have some historical perspective, any discussion of the art of the late 20th and early 21st centuries will inevitably have to make significant room for tattooing, one of the disciplines currently generating the most work for artists around the world. Even so, to this day, the Faculty keeps turning its back on us, regarding tattooing as little more than an anecdotal frivolity and leaving us out of its teaching programmes. Shameful. Through this insistence they will eventually bring about the real end of the Fine Arts degree, because it will serve absolutely no purpose.