From Publishers Weekly
Popularized by sailors and bikers, tattoos have become indispensable fashion accessories for rockers and rappers, whose professional responsibility it is to embody exotic, outlaw primitivism to the public. Hence this coffee-table collection of photographs of tattooed celebrities culled from the pages of Rolling Stone. The portraits here, by famous celebrity and fashion photographers, are heavily weighted toward sleeveless, scowling male musicians, whose remarkably consistent tattoo tastes run to a comic book aesthetic of gothic lettering, deaths heads, dragons and babes (until they age and begin inscribing wives' and childrens' names into their flesh). Accompanying interviews and captions allow the subjects to pontificate on the personal significance of their tattoos ("Weed was the biggest part of my life at that point," muses Crazytown's Shifty Shellshock of his marijuana-leaf tattoo). While fans of the celebrities pictured here will swoon over the lush photos, the book fails to make the case for tattoos as real works of art capable of signifying something to onlookers as well as to their owners.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Book Description
Tattoos, rock and roll, and Rolling Stone-the ideal combination for the ultimate book on celebrities and their tattoos. Rolling Stone's TATTOO NATION exposes this dynamic art form in all its glory as embodied by the biggest pop icons of our time, from Drew Barrymore to Eminem, Melissa Etheridge to Ozzy Osbourne, Busta Rhymes to Mary J. Blige. TATTOO NATION features candid and never-beforeseen photographs and equally revealing interviews that chronicle the gradual emergence of this evocative art form into mainstream society via pop-culture icons. These edgy color and black-and-white photographic spreads present pop and rock icons ranging from counter culture pioneers like Janis Joplin to today's trendsetters Bjork and Lenny Kravitz showing off their body artwork.
