The human body is a unique canvas that has been decorated in many ways for millennia by people all over the world. Since the beginning of human history, people have embellished their bodies for many reasons, but there is no known culture in which people do not paint, pierce, tattoo, reshape, or simply adorn their bodies. Whether with permanent marks like tattoos or scars, or temporary decorations like makeup, clothing, and hairstyles, body art is a way of signaling an individual's place in society, marking a special moment, celebrating a transition in life or simply following a fashion. The painting of bodies today called body painting has its origin in a widespread tradition of primitive tribes. In many cases the painting was only used to decorate bodies but generally it was used to express sorrow, it was a mark of a special tribe or a sign to distinguish tribes.

At war body painting was used to frighten off living and ghostlike enemies and it was also used in religious dancing to represent or scare away ghosts. Body painting is a form of body art, considered by some as the most ancient form of art. Unlike tattoo and other forms of body art, body painting is temporary, painted onto the human skin, and lasts for only several hours, or at most a couple of weeks. Painting of the face is known as face painting.
Modern body art practices including tattooing, piercing, body painting, body reshaping, henna, and scarification.

Body art is not just the latest fashion. In fact, if the impulse to create art is one of the defining signs of humanity, the body may well have been the first canvas. Alongside paintings on cave walls created by early humans over 30,000 years ago, we find handprints and ochre deposits suggesting body painting. Some of the earliest mummies known-like the "Ice Man" from the Italian-Austrian Alps, known as Otzi, and others from central Asia, the Andes, Egypt and Europe-date back to 5000 years.

People were buried with ornaments that would have been worn through body piercing, and remains of others show intentionally elongated or flattened skulls. Head shaping was practiced 5000 years ago in Chile and until the 18th century in France. Stone and ceramic figurines found in ancient graves depict people with every kind of body art known today. People have always marked their bodies with signs of individuality, social status, and cultural identity.

Cultural importance of body art

Body art takes on specific meanings in different cultures. It can serve as a link with ancestors, deities, or spirits. Besides being decorative, tattoos, paint, and scars can mediate the relationships between people and the supernatural world. The decorated body can serve as a shield to repel evil or as a means of attracting good fortune. Body art carries powerful messages about the decorated person.

Colors, designs, and the use of particular techniques are part of a visual language with specific cultural meanings. To decipher this language, one needs to understand the shared symbols, myths, social values, and individual memories that are drawn on the body. Since body art can draw attention to cultural differences, it is also a means by which people eroticizes and sometime ostracize others. But body art in all cultures changes, and it is an ideal canvas for individual creativity and self-reinvention. It can also be a way for people to challenge social values and cultural assumptions about beauty, identity, and the body itself.

Body art can be an expression of individuality, but it can also be an expression of group identity. Body art is about conformity and rebellion, freedom and authority. Its messages and meanings only make sense in the context of culture, but because it is such a personal art form, it continually challenges cultural assumptions about the ideal, the desirable, and the appropriately presented body.

• Africa and Melanesia: In Africa and Melanesia the magical purpose of body painting in connection with sorrow (with white clay), in the facial paintings of the Eskimos who were whaling in the Bering Sea, at youth initial ceremonies. Africa can be called the cradle of body-decoration because in nearly every tribe in African regions and landscapes different forms of body-decoration are usual; slightly changed they can be found in our culture today.

• Australian Aboriginal Art: Body painting, decoration and personal adornment traditionally carry deep spiritual significance for Australian Aboriginal people. Body painting is carried out within strict conventions that are primarily related to spiritual matters, although the creative nature of these activities is also acknowledged. The art of body decoration includes scarring, face and body painting for ritual, wearing of ornaments, and the transformation of the body using added texture to form living images of ancestral beings. Scars were made on the body for many reasons, but mainly during ceremonies to mark age, initiation or to raise a person's status. Techniques varied from place to place, but scarification usually involved cutting the skin with a sharp shell or rock, then rubbing irritating substances like ash into the cuts so that important scars resulted. This process created raised, pigmented patterns on the chest, back, arms or legs of the initiate.

• Indian culture: Body painting has a great importance in the Indian culture. It was the measure of appreciation within a group. It gave information about man's merits in war and hunting. The color red was the color of war and a symbol of success, whereas the color blue was a symbol of difficulties and crush.

Techniques

Tattoo: The tattoo has its origin in body painting. Probably it has been detected incidentally and used to decorate bodies. These paintings can be found even earlier than rock-paintings. Tattoo is the insertion of ink or some other pigment through the outer covering of the body, the epidermis, into the dermis, the second layer of skin. Besides its meaning as body decoration body painting was also a protection against external influences, demons and magic. It was also used as a protection against insects, as camouflage, as label or for medical-hygienic reasons.

Different groups and cultures have used a variety of techniques in this process. Decorative, tattoos send important cultural messages. Tattoos can also signify bravery and commitment to a long, painful process-as is the case with Japanese full body tattooing or Mori body and facial patterns. In India tattoos were used to express deep sorrow. The deeper the sorrow the greater the self-mutilation.

The first tattoos can be found in 500 BC in Africa, Polynesia and Asia, in the Egyptian culture and in North and South America. Traditional Polynesian tattooists punctured the skin by tapping a needle with a small hammer. The electric tattoo machine and related technological advances in equipment have revolutionized tattoo in the West, expanding the range of possible designs, the colors available, and the ease with which a tattoo can be applied to the body.

Scarification: scar tattoo is the earliest form of bringing color in and under the skin. As protection against infections wounds were rubbed with additives to ameliorate the healing process. Later scars were treated with soot or with colors made of plant sap. The permanent ripping of the scars retarded the healing and intensified the effect. Scarification, also called cicatrisation, alters skin texture by cutting the skin and controlling the body's healing process. Scarification is painful; the richly scarred person is often honored for endurance and courage.
In some cultures, a smooth, unmarked skin represents an ideal of beauty, but people in many other cultures see smooth skin as a naked, unattractive surface. Scar pattern with lines and points is scratched in the skin of the whole body to strengthen immunity.

Body-decoration: in many cultures people have found ways to permanently or temporarily sculpt the body. They are a part of the personal image, show the development from child to adult and they are often used in ritual initiations as a clear sign of the social development. Male and female beauty, people have bound the soft bones of babies' skulls or children's feet, stretched their necks with rings, removed ribs to achieve tiny waists, and most commonly today, sculpted the body through plastic surgery. In connection with women the form and style of the decoration show if she is married or single, if she is mother or widow. In connection with men the paintings in certain tribes show the successful warriors or hunters.

Piercing: Body piercing, which allows ornaments to be worn in the body, has been a widespread practice since ancient times. Pierced are the soft tissues of the face, pierced the genitals and the chest, ear, nose and lip ornaments, as well as pierced figurines. Because ornaments can be made of precious and rare materials, they may signal privilege and wealth.

Modern use of Body Painting
Body painting continues as a strong and live part of contemporary Aboriginal culture, not only in traditional ceremonies but also as part of art and practices by urban people. Body painting is not always full nude bodies. Body painting includes smaller designs on one area on the body. There has been a revival of body painting in the Western society since the 1960s, in part prompted by the liberalization of social mores regarding nudity. Stephen Page, the artistic director of the Bangarra Dance Theatre, has commented about body painting that "There are no time constraints, no boundaries; there’s an apparent timelessness about the ritual.”

Body painting festivals
Body painting festivals happen annually across the world bringing together professional body painters as well as keen amateurs. Artists from over 40 nations worldwide come to this unique event and put body art into the mountain and lake scenery.

The World Body painting Festival at Seeboden is the first of its kind in the world and has become the “Mecca of Body painting”. The world champions are chosen in the 3 main categories Brush/Sponge, Airbrush and Special Effects, as well as in one special category, the night contest for UV effects.