CELTIC TATTOO - PRECIOUS HERITAGE OR PAST IT?

Tattoo TV have asked Joolz Denby, Tattooer, artist, poet and novelist to write a piece on Celtic Tattoos, our reasoning? Well apart from her award winning writing skills, Joolz was a leading exponant in the resurgence of this ancient art form as a 'contemprary imagining' in the 80's, so who better to serve you some words. ‘I hate Celtic tattoos, I really do, they always look shit, whatever you do with them they always look dated, and you can quote me on that.’  Michael D. ‘I just think they (Celtic tattoos) look beautiful, really - I don’t know - graceful, elegant - timeless, I guess. Love ‘em, just love ‘em. ‘ Alan G. ‘I saw my first Celtic tattoo at a Clash concert - around ‘83 - I’d never seen anything like it before - it was amazing.’  Phil B. ‘Oh God - Celtic tattoos really are the Marks & Spencer of tattooing, aren’t they? So, so boring, man -  like my auntie’d have them or something. Awful.’  Anonymous female conventioneer. ‘I love Celtic work, it’s so full of meaning, so classical. When I look at my  Celtic tattoos they make me feel better, the meanings remind me to be strong, you know?’  Janine F. Celtic tattoos - love ‘em or hate ‘em - they polarise opinion, cause arguments, have passionate supporters or leave tattoo fans cold. To some they are the badge of a tribe, the must-have tattoo symbolising a particular spirituality and identity, to others the mark of a dead fashion that they strive to distance themselves from as fast as possible. Of course, no-one wants to be caught wearing last year’s clothes -  the previous mode is always the subject of disdain and contempt but a pair of high-waisted yellow flares, Zapata moustache and a mullet cut is one thing (and could be highly fashionable anti-fashion in some circles, of course) - a tattoo, permanent, indelible, is another. So given the emotive nature of this topic, unusually, I’d better state that this is a personal essay on this prickly subject not an academic instructional - and yes, I confess it - I do have Celtic tattoos. Celtic Knotwork tattoos became the absolute high point of ‘art tattooing’ in the early-mid to late 1980’s, and continued to hold almost total dominance as the crème de la crème of skin illustration for sometime after that. Celtic work continues to be a popular evergreen design form despite its modern reputation amongst young, go-getting tattooers as the absolute benchmark of bland. But - in the 1980’s, expert Celtic tattooers became the ink-slinging, artistic anti-heroes of a generation of  Post-Punk Pagans. These lost boys and girls - battered almost unconscious (in the UK) by the Iron Lady, prime minister Margaret Thatcher’s brutal and uncompromisingly materialist regime - were looking for a symbolism that could identify their disillusion with a consumerist Society, their spirituality and their ecological and Gaia Theory interests. The Modern Celtic Revival spearheaded amongst the Alternative crowd by underground rock band New Model Army’s seminal recording ‘Thunder & Consolation’ (released 1989) was branded as the apogee of cool by the circular knot work I created for its cover art. Little did I know at the time as I delightedly trawled through George Bain’s classic book, ‘Celtic Art - The Methods Of Construction’ (Dover) which I had picked up for pence in a thrift shop and chose a Pictish circular design to base my artwork on, that Celtic Art would become, for a few years not merely a fashion in illustration, but a global obsession that defined a generation and the ‘Thunder Knot’ the most tattooed symbol in the world at one point. I myself - young, naïve, gobby and wild - would become the accidental and somewhat unwilling spokeswoman for Celtic tattooing (which is why Tattoo TV - far too young themselves to have been Celts - have asked me to write this article) and an unwitting style icon of the 80’s Celtic Horde. I have the second ever Celtic armband tattoo done in the UK. Somewhere in Britain a biker has the first - we passed each other going into Micky ‘Sharpz’ Lewis’ Birmingham (UK) studio sometime in the early 80’s. Micky swiftly became the King Of Celtic, and my armband turned up in flash, printed on designer jackets (John Richmond) and in the media as the tattoo stock photo, for years afterwards. Celtic knotwork itself is of course, an extremely ancient art form. A swift canter through the internet will pull up dozens and dozens of sites - both academic and terminally fey - detailing the history and development of Celtic culture and art from the earliest Iron Age Hallsatt and La Tène Celtic cultures through to the exquisite 8th Century AD Book Of Kells and Book Of  Durrow, illuminated manuscripts created by monk-scribes for the greater glory of the Christian god. The Victorian Celtic Revival seized on Celtic work as an aspect of the pure Noble Savage and in my own home city of Bradford we have one of the finest Victorian Cemeteries in the UK, peppered with hand-carved stone Victorian Celtic monuments, the everlasting ribbons of Celtic knotwork weaving the hope of life everlasting for the beloved dead. In terms of art, Celtic knotwork as a design element is an abstract, ornamental interwoven art form which avoids the use of straight lines and invokes complex and esoteric symbolism. It draws on natural forms both of plant, animal and human without recourse to the classic representative traditions, and gathers influences from other global cultures as seen in its key-patterns and spirals. It is intended to have both decorative and spiritual functions, being both a pleasure to the eye and a reminder of deeper religious faith. This emphasis on the faith, or spiritual, aspect of Celtic work drew those who were young and Alternative in the 80’s, because in those days, a Pagan revival was also taking place. In more modern times religiosity of any sort is seen as the sanctuary of the unbalanced and contributes to the ‘hippie-shit’ reputation Celtic work currently endures, but during the cultural flux of the 80’s young people - politicised, marginalised, alienated - sought to explore all counter-culture modes of expression and Paganism was just one of those avenues of interest. It chimed with the blossoming of the ecology movements and the immensely popular writings of eco-philosopher James Lovelock. Celtic work, with its romantic, mystic appearance, eternal symbolism and roots in distant Western history became the perfect artistic conduit for the back-to-the-earth yearnings of urban warrior-children. In the UK, Micky ‘Sharpz’ Lewis - now better known for manufacturing tattoo machines - was the undisputed leader of  Celtic tattooing. His undistinguished little studio in Birmingham became a place of almost holy pilgrimage and Micky - Welsh, wise-cracking, sarcastic, guitar-picking and deeply creative - became the tattooer du jour. If you didn’t have a ‘Sharpz Celtic’ you were no-one. Micky himself had a superb natural talent for the creation of Celtic work that really lived and breathed - combining adroit technicality with a genuine artistic flair, he made Celtic tattoos that were vibrant, human and infinitely desirable. He never fell into the ‘technical trap’ whereby obsession with graphic perfection and cold precision robs Celtic work of its fiery life. Whilst true Celtic is much more than the sum of its parts, and many a tyro tattooer has fallen foul of the ‘just copy the stencil, it’ll be OK’ lure, descending swiftly into a hideous Gordian tangle of botched cross-overs that brook no escape, Micky’s sharp eye for the mathematics combined with his creativity took modern Celtic tattoo to a whole different level. Celtic tattoo burst on the tattoo scene like a bomb. Before - it seemed - tattoo had been all about hearts and swallows, hula-hula girls and daggers through skulls. These old designs might be the must-have retro mode now, but then they were simply the tedious, confining, boring norm. We might have wanted tattoos, and lots of them, but we didn’t want vapid moon-faced Geishas twirling paper parasols or the dreaded portly Black Panther. These symbols meant nothing to us. Then, suddenly, as it seemed to us mere punters,  there was an alternative - an abstract aesthetic that didn’t have to employ the crude primary colours in use before but was a stylish and elegant monochrome that flowed with the body and was, at the time, daring beyond belief. I myself was asked what ’that weird black shit’ was on many occasions at the covert and rare tattoo conventions of the day. It was reviled as ‘freako’ by established traditional tattooers and the usual ‘it’ll never catch on’  remarks made. But the combined pull of counter-culture markers such as that New Model Army album, their astonishing concerts filled with the dandy New Celtic elite attired as boot-clog-wearing, Celtic tattooed, Peacock Punk Lords Of Chaos, fed into a mainstream of the would-be tattooed that yearned to be something more than mere consumers of the born-work-buy-die society. Every boy could be a Celtic Warrior, every girl a Celtic Queen. Ireland became the popular holiday destination and the knick-knack shops of Connemara were picked clean of dusty Celtic souvenirs. The Celtic Emerald Isle was suddenly the spiritual home of Celtic kids from London to Cologne and everywhere in between. But like all fashions, the extreme, obsessive passion for Celtic was not to last. A new generation sought to distance themselves from the bonds of the past just as children must separate from their parents and revile all the previous generation adored in order to achieve natural autonomy. Celtic became ’boring’. The simplistic naïve drawings of the generation previous to the Celtic Tribes as demonstrated by the work of Ed Hardy et al were taken up as the  precious folk art of the Western traditions. The Gypsy Heads and pin-up girls the Celts had scorned became  must-have Old School tattoos. The ideas of what was Romantic changed - out went the Celtic Warrior and his Amber-clad Queen, in came the Old School Wide Boy and his Burlesque Diva. It was ever thus. Of course, there are still those die-hards who shake their heads over the resurgence and dominant popularity of these essentially crude Old School designs, not seeing the comfort to be had in their familiar symbols and forgetting that every generation must have its own battle-flags. They yearn for the days when tattooers ruined their eyes and broke their hearts over intricate interlock designs that terrifyingly brooked no errors and Celtic was indeed, King. But they forget something: just as the Celts scorned Old School, so the coming generation will turn away from those endless swallows and find something different - but perhaps not new, because what is ever truly new in Art - heaping scorn on their parents Old School Man’s Ruin sleeves and Rose Of Fortune chest pieces as ‘boring’ in their turn. What will the new young guns come up with, I wonder? Wouldn’t it be funny if in the decades to come, Celtic saw yet another revival? Perhaps not in the form we are used to seeing it but presented as, let’s say, big, bold and in brilliant colour? After all there is some evidence to indicate the actual Pagan Celts preferred their knot work in luminous shades of red and yellow, painted large on roof-beams in their drinking halls and embroidered in massive panels on their dress and tunic hems. The days of the tight, eye-boggling blackwork Celtic may be over  - but welcome the flamboyant, flaunting 2015 Proto-Celtic Revival? Stranger things have happened…