We Wanna Send You to Check Out Ed Hardy: Deeper Than Skin

Don Ed Hardy, “El Tigre”, 2009. Acrylic on digital print, 16 x 13 1/8 in. (40.6 x 33.3 cm). Collection of the artist. © 2019 Don Ed Hardy

Ed Hardy: Deeper Than Skin at the de Young museum is the first museum retrospective of renowned tattoo artist and California native Ed Hardy tracks his goal of elevating the tattoo from its subculture status to an important visual art form. The exhibition surveys Hardy’s life in art that has as its inspiration both traditional American tattooing and Japan’s ukiyo-e era culture.

The exhibit only runs till October 6th! Buy tickets right here or enter below to win!

Deeper than Skin will feature paintings, drawings, prints and three-dimensional works by famed tattoo artist Ed Hardy in a retrospective format that begins with a selection of drawings from the 1950s, when the young artist became fixated on the art of tattooing. Photographs and sketched tattoo designs by the ten-year-old Hardy will be on view, all of them taken at or inspired by the tattoo parlors of the Long Beach Pike, an amusement zone not far from his Corona del Mar home. When Hardy was a teenager, his interest turned from tattooing to creating imagery inspired by the Southern California hot-rod, custom-car, and surf cultures. In high school, an influential teacher directed him to investigate contemporary art and literature, including Pop Art and Beat poetry. Hardy made trips to visit Los Angeles galleries, including the now-legendary Ferus Gallery, where he saw the work of Andy Warhol, Bruce Conner, John Altoon, and Philip Guston. Hardy’s drawings and collages from this period show their influence and will be exhibited alongside works that have what Hardy describes as “strident humanist bent.”