At Quadrant, Dalrymple explores the surge of tattooing in modern society and argues that what might be hailed as “body art” is really a widespread embrace of kitsch, likening the tattooed skin to the mass-market populism of the painter Vladimir Tretchikoff.
Tattooing is often called body art, but in reality it should be called body kitsch. There is a crude aesthetic sensibility (if that is not too elevated a term for it) of which it is always a reflection.
Time he said something new.