A tattoo design by George Burchett

GEORGE BURCHETT is an important figure in the oft-cited history of tattoos.

Born in 1872 in Brighton, England, he was drawn to etching skin from an early age after seeing tattooed performers at the Royal Aquarium in London. He practiced on his brother and his classmates.

He joined the Royal Navy as a young man and traveled to parts of the world where tattoos were already common. He returned to London and eventually opened up a tattoo shop near Waterloo Station. His early business was mostly sailors, but eventually he found work among European royals and the monied. King Frederick IX of Denmark, King George V and King Alfonso XIII of Spain were among his clients. Tattoos started to become fashionable.

His work included the usual dragons (influenced by Japanese tattoos), flags, warships and eagles, but also delicately-rendered nature butterflies, flowers and other natural objects. On paper, his designs showed a high degree of artistry, as in the image above. While we cannot see any of George Burchett’s tattoos in person (he died in 1953), we can see photos of those who had them. All of his tattoos, no matter how skillfully rendered, faded with time, much more dramatically than works on paper.

Burchett in his London studio

Burchett might be astonished at the popularity of his craft today. The idea that has fueled much of the normalization of tattoos is, however, something he would surely deeply support. That idea is the notion that tattoos are art. They are now called “body art” and extolled as a form of personal expression.

That tattoos involve artistic skills is beyond question.

The medium is living tissue. The process involves pain, blood letting and weeks of healing. But most tattoos involve drawing skill and through the dissemination of images, even highly detailed designs are available to greater numbers of people. A small and expensive number of tattoos involve great originality and craftsmanship.

But are tattoos truly art?

The answer is, people say, in the eye of the beholder. I would like to make the case against.

This idea that visual works rendered in ink injected into the second layer of the skin is “art” is a bit of pretentiousness that has unfortunately captured the minds of some very talented graphic artists, as well as the general public. With some serious consideration, we can see that this idea is false. Tattoos are never truly art, however much visual pleasure they may give. They do not qualify as art because the essence of art is the creation of beauty. Given the essential beauty and magnificence of one of the greatest works of art — the human body — a tattoo, which is by definition a nearly indelible mark on the body, is always a form of defacement.

Skin, even marred by common, natural imperfections or anomalies, is an organ of such miraculous inventiveness and artistry that it is almost impossible for us to appreciate all its facets. It encloses the watery, gelatinous, messy contents of the body. Who but the greatest of artists could conceive of such a container — so soft, so washable, so easily repaired?

But it’s more than an enclosure. It enables one of the five senses. Through touch we know our way around us, accomplish millions of tasks, feel the pain necessary to survival and experience indescribably intense pleasure.

It is impossible to go into any but a small part of the wonders of skin here, but there is one rarely-mentioned aspect of its awesomeness I would like to mention and that is relevant to this subject. On a visual level, the skin’s (almost) blankness is another stroke of divine genius. Imagine if we were checkered or striped. It works for animals and insects; not for human beings. Why is that so?

Without the relative blankness of this canvas, we could not so much appreciate the face, its amazing originality and expressiveness, especially in the eyes and the mouth. The face conveys a personal language of its own — even the face that is not conventionally beautiful.

The skin grants expressiveness to the entire body. We notice the personality in body movements, the way people walk and gesture, and the skin does not distract from this visual appraisal. This is why the body does not work as a moving billboard. When you see a billboard on a meadow, do you notice the meadow or the billboard? It is the same with tattoos.

The tattoo can only be a distraction and a detraction, in the same way that graffiti on the side of a building, even an ugly building, is never an improvement, no matter how artfully executed.

Tattoos are depersonalizing and therefore cannot be art because we are art.

Rather than being a form of individual expression, tattoos distract from what is truly original  — the face, the physical manner and bearing. I have never seen an uninteresting face. Even uninteresting people have interesting faces, some fascinatingly bland.

Is it any surprise that the Romans and Greeks, with their famous idealization (and sometimes worship) of the human body, rejected tattoos except for slaves and criminals? They were not unfamiliar with the techniques of tattooing, but they also understood skin and its beauty. Imagine a tattoo on the man who posed for this first-century AD, Roman bust. It would be not body art, but body anti-art. It would distract from what was already there, what had formed from infancy through the mysterious impressions that thoughts and emotions make on the surfaces of the skin.

Think of all those magnificent Greek and Roman statues of athletes and warriors. Yes, they were idealizations, but the ideal was beautifully blank. Skin was so beautiful that only the finest marble could capture its suppleness.

Only people who have lost the sense of their inherent individuality and lost an appreciation for this sublime artistry of nature would find themselves in the hands of the “tattoo artist.”

All of George Burchett’s tattoos, no matter how skillfully rendered, faded with time, much more dramatically than works on paper. Such is the nature of ink injected into the skin. And all tattoos are destroyed before long. This canvas is indeed more ephemeral than the canvases of conventional painters.

It is just as well Burchett’s famous works are gone. They in no way made the world a more beautiful place.

— Comment —

Tony S. writes:

So, the father of the tattoo industry, which where I live is the third most common establishment in strip malls that I notice driving around (behind crappy food joints and nail/hair saloons), was a man name Burchett.  Appropriately close to “butcher”.

True art expresses transcendent truth; everything else is either propaganda, advertising, or crass hucksterism.

And according to his wikipedia article, George was not a physician but apparently wore a white medical coat as per the image from your article; he also absconded from the navy … so I’m pretty sure he was just a guy fleecing silly rich people who don’t know what to spend their money on.

Laura writes:

He went into the business when it was still stigmatized. I don’t think money was his primary motivation.

Tattoos have a deep, psychic attraction for some people. That magnetic pull comes in unconscious ways, I believe, from the ancient past. In all primitive societies where it took place, tattooing had religious significance. It upheld the social order, such as it was. In the modern world, it has deep significance too and people can’t fully explain it. But it is not like those primitive tattoos. It is an assertion of self in the midst of chaos and a strong desire to feel alive.

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