Body Language

This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

The New York Sun

Ornament is crime, according to the Austrian architectural theorist Adolf Loos. Two culturally prevalent forms of ornamentation that bear out this stricture, arguably, are graffiti and tattoos. But much as they violate the purity, respectively, of buildings and bodies, these ornamental systems have deep roots and cult followings as popular forms of artistic expression.

Lina Bertucci traveled to tattoo conventions around the world, making portraits of women between the ages of 19 and 59 (mostly closer to the first figure) sporting wildly adventurous body decorations. Her photographs are likely to engender reactions of fascination and repugnance, sometimes in the same viewer. On show at Perry Rubenstein Gallery, they are also fabulous images: crisp, clean, and resonant. Tinged with voyeurism, and unabashedly “arty” in their adopted poses and settings, they nonetheless attain a documentary precision, a coolness that allows the individuality of their sitters to come through while capturing the ambivalent emotions surrounding the practice of making one’s skin the permanent support of an ornamental decoration.

The prevalent facial expression is somewhere between defiance and resignation. There is little evidence of humor or delight on these women’s faces, although whether that was on the instruction of the photographer or reflects the mood of heavily tattooed women is open to conjecture.

“Kerstin, 24, Drama Student / Works in Vintage Shop” (2007) brilliantly captures the central paradox of making permanent a transient taste. The young woman sports an array of tattoos — pinups, japonism, nautical motifs — on her chest, arms, and left thigh. She wears a Victorian-style bathing suit which is itself decorated in anchors and bathing suits. The wall behind her has a dense, black-and-white floral wallpaper, and there is an animal pattern on the ground. The attire and furnishings represent rich, strong tastes that will be outgrown and replaced as they loose their luster, humor, novelty. The tattoos, however, which are all the more tacky and ephemeral, are there for “good.” “Deborah, 45, Assembler in Machine Shop” (2007) has a finely drawn fan on her back and around her waist and buttock, and intricate tattoos representing garters on her right leg that hold up an elaborate, gaudy “stocking.” Her flesh is beginning to sag, and with it her bold design. Were she a painting, it would be time to restretch the canvas.

Many of these tattoos are extraordinary in their artistry, wit, and imagination, but more extraordinary is the decision to subject the body to a layer of decoration that can be removed only with great difficulty. However their moods or outlooks on life might change, the bearers can’t strip down beyond the taste or whim of an extreme moment’s ornamental decision.

Until January 5 (534 W. 24th St., between Tenth and Eleventh avenues, 212-627-8000).


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