The artworld and the art of the tattoo have long held each other at a wary distance. While they often share an adherence to certain formulas, and both suffer from clichéd notions of “What is art?,” where they most often differ is in terms of media. Not ink, which can and does apply to both, but in the medium to which it is applied, which in tattoo art is, of course, that infinitely tricky canvas of the human epidermis.
Tattooing as a fine art has a history as long
