Note to self: in the future, avoid consuming copious amounts of hummus immediately before bedtime–it makes for very odd dreams, indeed. All I can remember now is that I was in Singapore producing some show–what kind? I don’t know–and I was obsessed with tracking down my friend Keng from grad school. It was maddening and pointless all at the same time. Like Kafka with palm trees.
Needless to say, I didn’t last long in dreamland. It’s not even 8:00, and I’ve already been up for nearly three hours.
Of course, that’s not completely bad. During the course of my groggy surfing, I came across the presumably new personal homepage of one of my favorite Japanese artists (actually, one of the few I know by name), Gengoroh Tagame. I first saw his drawings on Richard‘s old site, then I began running into him all over the place. His work is a virtual parade of hunkalicious Asian daddies, many of which have decorated the covers of G men magazine, a Japanese publication for bear lovers.
Looking through his most recent illustrations, though, I’m struck by how different they seem from his earlier work. The first pieces I ever saw were very, well, Japanese, with kimonos and that wacky fundoshi underwear and stuff. Today, though, his style seems practically Western, complete with Chelsea fag-type models in wifebeaters; even their eyes–which should stereotypically signal the model’s ethnicity–are generic.
Am I fetishizing Asians? Or am I lamenting the global melting pot–fueled by airplanes and televisions and AOL–that is blurring what were once fairly distinct identities into a single Western whole?
You know what? I don’t care. The drawings are hot, end of story.
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