FOR A HISTORY OF SYMBOLS: THE TATTOO IN ROMANIA
The exposition will be opened until the 17th of May 2015.The exhibition “For a History of Symbols: the Tattoo in Romania” was put together in partnership with the Mina Minovici Institute of Legal Medicine, and presents for the first time the scholarly collection of tattoos assembled by Dr. Mina Minovici ever since the end of the XIXth century.
The opening will take place on Wednesday, December 3rd 2014, at 13:00, at Suţu Palace, the Bucharest Municipality Museum’s headquarters. The exhibition will be open starting with the 3rd of December 2014 up until April 30th 2015. “Tattoos have been in fashion in Romanian society ever since the Neolithic age, and in the Middle Ages tattoos were common only within the higher echelons of society (a cultural element taken from the Oriental world) and probably among more extravagant figures like Petru Cercel (1619-1620, ruler of Moldavia). Along with modernity, tattoos spread across all social structures, especially urban ones. Tattoos, along with their varied symbols, can be found among the lowliest delinquents to the highest standing members of society. From a sociologic and psychological standpoint, tattoos have an important mental and imagination-related consistency, the represented symbols often underlining traits of individual character. From the historical viewpoint of the modern urban quotidian, the impact of accentuated modernization, during which individuals find themselves assaulted by problems, many of the tattoos represented either a means of protest towards a world that had become hard to bear, or a way to show their belonging to a group, community, or sexual minority. In modern Romania, the first articulation of the phenomenon of tattoos does not belong to a historian, but to the legal medicine doctor Nicolae Minovici. The latter published in 1898 the work Tattoos in Romania, which was his graduation thesis, still a point of reference for Romanian medicine, and ought to be one for historiography. After 1850, Bucharest society had gone through the entire specter of modern social structures; a middle class of self-employed workers, peasants with consistent revenue, leaseholders, money lenders, etc., a “high” society with flexible boundaries despite resentment towards the nouveau-riches, and also a marginal society very ethnically, religiously, and professionally varied, which found itself on the path towards urbanization. One of the common elements – which can be defined as a particularity of one’s innermost character, which was not usually displayed to the public – was the tattoo, with its whole symbolism, also remarkably varied. One of the numerous causes for the presence of tattoos is tied to the notion of voluptuousness. Certain more-or-less obscene symbols, but related to a certain kind of excitation, not necessarily with sexual goals, played a determining role. Ernest Borneman in Dizionario dell’ Erotismo (1988) states that “tattoos are often erotically motivated, and therefore often broaches a sexual thematic regardless of social sphere. Certain Oceania based populations only women bearing a tattoo can conclude a marriage contract. In the West, erotically themed or obscene tattoos have been are very wide-spread.” It seems that the phenomenon of tattooing was not among the habits of the Romanian people, therefore meaning that it had been brought in by foreigners, one of many kinds of acculturation that modern urban and suburban Romanian society had taken over from similar European models. In regards to its essential traits, the phenomenon which took place in 1990 is similar, though the number of Romanians who became acquainted with the art of tattooing is significantly superior to the numbers recorded in 1898. In Romania, up until the Revolution of December 1989, tattoos only had the role of identifying one’s belonging to a group, or the purpose of portraying strictly personal meanings: “Gigi”, “Lola”, a heart pierced by an arrow, an anchor, a flower. Tattoos truly became a fashion only in our time, having been taken on as a mass-phenomenon from Western society, where the tattoo trend is beginning to fade. (Green, Terisa, The Tattoo Encyclopedia – A Guide to Choosing your Tattoo, A Fireside Book, Rockefeller Center, New York, 2003). Nicolae Minovici (1868-1941) was the second director of the Bucharest Morgue, following his brother, Dr. Mina Minovici, who had been the institution’s founder. Additionally, Nicolae had also founded the “Salvarea” Society (1906), today the Bucharest-Ilfov Ambulance, then the first Emergency hospital in Bucharest (1937), as well as the firs museum of national Romanian art (1906), today the Dr. Nicolae Minovici Museum of Folkloric Art, donated to the Commune of Bucharest in 1937.” Dr. Adrian Majuru Poster graphics: Mihai I. Grăjdeanu |