The first thing to learn from Ed Hardy: Tattoo the World is that one of America's premiere tattoo artists really is an artist. The engaging documentary by Emiko Omori shows Hardy at work with pen and paper; he knows how to draw and speaks of finding inspiration in the moment. Of course, skin is a much different canvas than the materials commonly available in art school; Hardy attended the San Francisco Art Institute and devoured art history, yet when he began working on people, he found that much of what he learned had to be forgotten in favor of concentrating on the moment. The variables in skin and physiognomy are great and challenging.
Many revealing moments turn up during Omori's interviews with his subject. Hardy was the artistic only child from a blue-collar background. Drawing on the quick was a way of avoiding fights and as he grew into his teen years, the seamy allure of archaic midways in 1950s southern California and the Mexican iconography of sex and death vied for his attention with modern art and the Beats. Tattooing was a way of sidestepping the pretensions of the aaht scene while earning a living as an artist. After establishing a reputation for himself on the West Coast, Hardy went to Japan for a six-month apprenticeship with a tattoo master, where he learned to transliterate traditional woodblock images into the medium of skin.
Ed Hardy: Tattoo the World is out on DVD and VOD.
