Author: Tomás Barceló
When I talk about art, I almost always mean popular art. I am much more interested in the individual relationship between a person and a specific work than in the abstract dynamics between institutions, markets, or theoretical discourses. What major museums or cultural bodies do matters little to me if people do not take part in it.
Although I often describe the current state of art as complicated, or even dark, I am not pessimistic. I believe things will turn out well, although we need to discover how to make that happen.
While painting and sculpture have been losing their place in homes since the nineties, another kind of visual art has grown massively: tattooing. Walls have been emptying, but bodies have been filling up. And tattoo artists are, in the end, draftsmen. They work with images, with symbols, with composition. It is visual art, without a doubt.
In the eighties, tattooing was far from being a common form of expression. It had barely any visible presence and, when it did appear, it was linked to very specific contexts: port environments, prisons, or fairly closed subcultures. It was not part of the everyday landscape or of social life in general, and for many people it was even a sign of distrust or marginality. What happened for a marginal practice in the eighties to become such a widespread form of expression today?
It does not seem to have been thanks to major institutional drives or cultural strategies organized from above. Quite the opposite. The growth of tattooing seems to have come from small personal initiatives, independent studios, direct relationships. Moreover, for a time it operated in a surprisingly guild-like way. Before the internet, learning to tattoo meant finding someone who already knew how to do it. It is curious that something so disruptive should have had such an ancient structure.
If we look at it with a little perspective, the change coincides with a broader social transformation. From the forties to the eighties, the core of social life was the family, represented in the home. From the nineties onward, that idea begins to change. The individual gains prominence. Relationships become more flexible, more open, less structured around a stable family unit. Homes have become more functional, more private, more oriented toward rest or content consumption. In some cases, almost transit stations.
And in that context, it makes sense that the place where symbolic identity is projected should also change. From the home to the body. Alongside the growth of tattooing, other forms of individual expression have also grown: clothing, makeup, personal care. Everything that turns the body into a space of expression.
Meanwhile, “wall art” tried to react, and the most common response was to try to make art that was less conflictive, less demanding, more decorative. In a sense, it tried not to disturb. But in the phenomenon of tattooing, the opposite occurs. In most cases, what is tattooed carries strong personal meaning. A tattoo is committed, expensive, painful, and permanent. It cannot be resold. It cannot be delegated or consumed from a distance. A tattoo requires direct contact with the artist, who is going to touch you, make you bleed, and heal you.
But something seems to be changing again in society. Speaking with young people, I perceive a fairly strong desire to build a home and form a family in a fuller sense. It is a kind of aspiration I do not remember seeing with such clarity in previous generations. A desire that coexists, paradoxically, with the terrible and growing difficulty of accessing housing. That desire is there, even if it is blocked.
When this situation becomes unblocked, one way or another, that impulse is likely to give rise once again to spaces where identity is built beyond the individual. At that point, an inevitable question arises: what role will the visual arts play?
Perhaps it is not simply a matter of hanging paintings on walls again as was done before. Perhaps these works need to be thought of differently, as elements that mark moments, that symbolize decisions, memories, or aspirations. An art that once again tells us who we are and who we want to be.
Perhaps it is about learning to “tattoo” homes.
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