Thinking of best pictures

After Titanic won in [whatever year that was] I did a series of satires on what drawing should have been done in the drawing room scene. The drawing should capture the over the top, lead the audience by the nose plotting, idiocy of the film [more aptly titled "kitschfest 1997"]. I've posed Rose cleaning her teeth after finishing her fries and coke; you can see the 'stahr odie oshun' round her neck; and behind the bed is an African mask signifying the inspiration of Picasso, who oddly enough has made no impact on the ersatz modernist inspired artist who then drew bland charcoal sketches [that somehow weathered 80 years submersion] as an expression of his grand passion. George aptly characterized this movie on Seinfeld, when he said, "so that old woman: she's just a liar isn't she?" LA Confidential came out this same year, an actual movie with plot, character development, and a good noir feel.
But then I feel a bit cranky about it. Someone might ask me where my irrational expectation that things make sense, that the powers that be and the populace at large be conversant in discerning and avoiding kitsch, comes from. Perhaps I have failed to live up to the impulse of modernism myself. And I feel that way at times, aware of what I could have done, should of done, in terms of pushing my work more toward experiment and engagement with issues of personality and identity. Could I have been more formalist in my approach? Could I have been more historically aware and conversant with issues? For instance, how could my work have been more a commentary on the Male Gaze? How could I have been oblivious to it all the years of my formation. I certainly see it in retrospect: the influence of advertizing, patriarchy, growing up in the South.
But I can't talk about it all in the past tense: the future holds much more. I feel that I am on the cusp, now more than ever, of work that is exceptional. As Jung might say, I've outgrown some of my fantasies and am now ready to embark on something new. Of course my friend Mark has heard me talk this way before - and each time, I have done something different, an alteration of my approach and change in my outcomes. So I hold out this hope that each day will bring something new in my art. Each drawing is done on a clean piece of paper and each drawing has that potential that I've learned from the past and discovered some new direction - or that I'm now ready to let myself discover the new and different and embrace them. Nothing could be more modernist.