TATTOO 101

Robert Watts was an experimental artist and founding member of Fluxus, an international network of anti-establishment artists who embraced the banal, heralded the unconventional, challenged authority, and rejected the distinction between high and low art. As a result, he played a large role in re-shaping art-making techniques and expanding the field of acceptable media. For example, in 1961, he designed SAFEPOST / K.u.K. FELDPOST / JOCKPOST [W.C. FIELDS] (see MMA 2018.142.1). In so doing, he became one of the first artists to create a sheet of postage stamps within a fine arts context. Watts made his stamps available for distribution through IMPLOSiONS, Inc., a novelty company established with George Maciunas and Herman Fine. The company, founded as a cash generating arm of Fluxus, was designed to sell reasonably priced mass produced items that could be distributed outside of the gallery, merging art and life. While the business did not achieve many of its production goals, one item it did realize was the stick-on temporary tattoo, a commodity that failed in its own era but came into fashion thirty years later.