Almost everyone I know has a tattoo somewhere, and most of them are tattooed almost everywhere. I have watched tattoos go from outcast to mainstream, from home jobs to tattoo salon to home jobs again, and I can frankly say I don’t know how I feel about them. Sometimes I love them, sometimes I loathe them, and I am apathetic about my own. Skin, a film/documentary by Ryan Hope, has added another layer to my loathing of/confusion about the phenomenon that tattoos have become. It describes itself as “a dark, stylish examination of tattoo culture as high art, and a film that tests the boundaries of art and the human body,” but I think there is another, more insidious message in it, one that I can’t tell whether the filmmaker meant to include or not. The first half an hour, while it features artists I have the utmost respect for – Raymond Pettibon, Jeff Koons and Damien Hirst – is an amalgamation of all the things I avoid Hollywood for: swooshy ironic hairdos, flat butts in booty shorts, camel toe, Calvin Klein abs and unwarrented pretention. Perhaps this is also an accurate portrayal of the aforementioned “high art” scene? Interspersed with the stories of the young people being tattooed with original artworks by their idols, the gentlemen from Christie’s auction house discuss how art acquires its value – namely, they decide what it’s worth when they auction it off to rich people. And then it gets really creepy, and to the reason that I am reviewing this highfalutin film: one of the guys from Christie’s discusses Wim Delvoye, aka the pig tattooer (see video after the jump), and his latest project – tattooing humans, and then skinning them after their death for “his” artwork, which will then be tanned and stretched on a canvas. He talks about how much Delvoye’s pig skins go for (£100,000), and the potential for the sale of human skin. I think part of the deal here is that Christie’s now owns these people’s skins and will someday auction the Ray Pettibon arm skin tattoo for £1,000,000 to the guy from Facebook. The last character to receive a tattoo in this film makes an astute observation about the film (in the midst of a slow-mo Brooklyn backyard party scene that made me want to burn their eyes out with their cool fucking cigarettes) – that this documentary is “a desire to spotlight an artform that previously resisted being intellectualized and pigeonholed into the fine arts scene.” Good point, but you might say that it’s an obvious one. What I really think this documentary is about is The Time Machine come to life; the rich people are now literally planning on making money off of the poor people’s backs. These unsuspecting, unbearably hip motherfuckers are going to be reaped one day by the suits at Christie’s, so that their skins can hang on the wall of some Upper East Side condo, between an original Ryan McGinley print and Terence Koh’s gold-dipped shit. Watch out 99%…this is the first step towards you becoming some financier’s dinner. After the jump, check out Skin and a special tattooed pig treat!
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