200 full-color illus.
Ed Hardy: Deeper than Skin—Art of the New Tattoo

As a young boy, Ed Hardy was so fascinated by tattoos that he established his own tattoo shop in the den of his family home, where he applied designs to his friends’ skin with colored pencils and his mother’s Maybelline eyeliner. After studying printmaking at the San Francisco Art Institute (SFAI), Hardy took the lessons he learned from old master printmakers and, in a career that spanned forty years, made it his goal to elevate the tattoo from its subculture, “outsider” status to a more revered visual art form. Ed Hardy: Deeper than Skin chronicles the first museum retrospective of the renowned tattoo artist, who took inspiration from both traditional American tattoo iconography from the first half of the twentieth century as well as Japan’s ukiyo-e-era culture. In addition to showcasing Hardy’s instantly recognizable tattoo designs and eclectic prints, this volume makes the artist’s story all the more vivid through life-tracing essays, a never-before-published interview, and a full-color spread of Hardy’s iconic 2000 Dragons, a 2,000-square-foot Tyvek scroll that the artist created for the new millennium.