Ornamenten en Tatoeages

The aim of this thesis is to investigate the status of tattoos within the artworld. Since the artworld is fairly broad, I have specified the question to: are tattoos ornaments? Before I answer that question, I have a look at the question ‘are ornaments art?’ I do this by explaining the aesthetics of Immanuel Kant and showing how the ornament could fit in it. Next, I provide an overview of Jacques Derrida’s reaction to Kant, in which the ornament, as parergon, plays a crucial part. This is followed up by the application of tattoos to what has been established about ornaments. In the case of Kant, it shows that tattoos could fit in with ornaments, though with some objections. By an application of the logic of the parergon to tattoos, I try to show that classifying tattoos as ornaments as done in the part about Kant has quite some ambivalence.