The New Yorker:

The art endures partly because it’s rooted in the moment—the surrender of one person to another.

By Jackson Arn 

To get a sense of what an art form is all about, study the refreshments. Book readings: the refrigerated black trays of carrots and chewy-plastic cheeses. Gallery openings: the flutes of warmish bubbles, dispassionately sipped. How you’re supposed to consume food and drink at these events mirrors how you’re supposed to consume the art—pensively, daintily, the brain signing off on the senses’ input. The New York Tattoo Convention, held during three days in October, just gives you candy. Beer and coffee sold at the front, tacos and burgers in food trucks outside, but free candy for all—bowls of it, spread across hundreds of tables.

Yes, this was around Halloween. But we are talking about a community where people dress up in permanent ink costumes that could be a butterfly or a tiger or the Joker, or all three. At the convention, I spotted tattoos of the Godfather, Harry Potter, Slim Shady, Saul Goodman, Walter White, Tony Montana, Pennywise, Tupac, Aslan, and the Viggo Mortensen character from “Eastern Promises” (less famous than the rest, but the inkiest role in one of the coolest tattoo movies), plus more divisive I.P. such as Donald J. Trump and Jesus H. Christ.

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