Download Video | More at moca.org | Thanks Paul in CT
Of the many happy campers at the record-demolishing (and economy-confounding) Sotheby’s auction last night, Takashi Murakami may have been the happiest. Drawing stares from art-world veterans — one told us she’d never seen an artist show up to watch his own work on the block — the Japanese Pop maestro sat in the back of the room with a serene smile as My Lonesome Cowboy, his larger-than-life sculpture of a boy waving an ejaculate lasso, brought in $15.2 million.
Thanks for the hint Ray :)
Guess you might say he is horny!!!
The boy is perfect – I’d like to see the model!!
O_O Where the hell would you put that thing?
This is weird. I saw that “sculpture” a couple of times before on the internet and I always used to think it’s pretty pornographic. Seeing now that it was actually sold at a high-class auction house really kind of disturbes me.
Not that I don’t like it, I even whacked off about it a few times before ;) :D but the sculpture does represent a very young boy, almost a bit too young to be presented in public as a work of art like in this case in my opinion.
I really ask myself why nobody was offended yet… You see the hysteric outcries every month about child porn and so on. Of course I am all against child porn and stuff, instead I’m just as you people here fond of beautiful youths but I just thought that this is too much for being presented and accepted in open society, especially when the thing is entitled “my lonesome cowboy”. I mean, this kind of speaks for itself, doesn’t it? But anyways, I sure like it.
I wonder who the artist is and whether he’s gay…
Looking at this sperm fountain makes me wondering if he did the sculpture after a real model he spends time with…
Will McBride did a lot of statues using young boy models with erections. A few were of just the erection. They weren’t at all cartonized like this sculpture so they could have been considered much more pornographic.
Gee. I always wondered “what if jeff Koons where gay?”
Who wouldve thought that there actually is a market for overblown pornographic camp nick-nack…
its to big to be a paperweight and to damn heavy to use it as a blunt instrumente to beat some rightwinged politician over the head with.. and its too darn ugly to have around…. pretty much like keanu reeves.
this thing is real?
Could someone mirror the original? I don’t have a Flickr account :(
Thanks!!!
hm, though i have a flickr account, i can’t open the pic.
“Dieser Inhalt ist für Sie nicht verfügbar.”
wtf?
and: is this only a german “problem”?
and btw: i would consider this as cp too.
but – who cares? ;)
Step 1: Spend $15.2 million on this fine piece of art.
Step 2: Position the statue behind your entrance door. Attach a camera to it, triggered by the doorknob.
Step 3: Invite all your relatives over for a family reunion.
Step 4: ???
Step 5: Profit
Josh Du wärst aber auch nicht schlecht als Moddel in diesem Fall.
Tabbs’s camera sounds like a good idea, but maybe it should be triggered by a different knob?
Also Mirrorboy wonders where to put that thing. I think I know ;-p
Odd that you guys would call this child pornography and/or be offended by it. Child pornography is not illegal because it is offensive, obscene, or “gross”. It’s illegal because it requires the exploitation of children in order to be produced and creating a demand for it would encourage people to abuse children by forcing them into participating. This statue obviously involved (as far as anyone can tell) no actual children. There is therefore no reason whatsoever for it to be considered in the same class as child pornography, and no reason for it to be illegal.
The idea of child sexuality was not even a particularly controversial one before the mid-1990s. Roseanne Barr is the primary source of everything we think today about child sexuality. Before her, everyone knew children had a primitive sexual side limited to raw sensuality. They saw relations between adults and children as potentially abusive because of the power differential, but accepted that if it WASNT a product of coercion, that the idea of psychological harm from any sexual activity was ludicrous. People going insane from rubbing bodies together? It just doesn’t make any sense.
But then Roseanne, one of the most well-known celebrities around at the time, came out with her story of long-repressed childhood rape. Make no mistake, it was rape for certain. But her argument was that since children are too stupid to be able to consent, that even if the child believed they wanted it to happen, it was still rape, and every single problem they ever encountered for the rest of their life could be blamed on those experiences. Alcoholic at 45? Blame your cousin you gave a blowjob to when you were 8 and he was 12. Wreck your car at 60? Blame your aunts best friend who laid you at 13. Etc.
She, and other commentators in the media who were obsessed with child sexuality as a moral issue, started around this idea that “children are not sexual creatures.” It is a ludicrous idea. We have VIDEOS of fetuses masturbating in the womb. Every mother of a boy knows that they get boners from birth. Every parent has seen their little girl rubbing her vagina and clitoris. Now, when parents see it happen, they leap on their children and take them to therapists, insisting they must have been molested. That is how completely they accepted this harmful “children are not sexual creatures” idea.
You guys betray having accepted that falsehood yourselves, believing that a statue of a boy masturbating to be offensive or whatever. Boys masturbate, it’s what they DO. In addition, it’s one of the most healthy activities a person can engage in. To do anything short of wholeheartedly encouraging kids to masturbate is to show a desire not just to ignore, but to harm their sexuality. Parents see the imaginary “pedophile menace” (look at the stats, pedophilia is very rare, and ephebophilia is not the same thing, look it up) as competition. They believe they should have complete control over their child as if it were property and not a human being. They believe that, as men “owned” the sexuality of their children in the past and sold their daughters for dowrys and the like, that today they have the right to castrate their children. Being raised in such a harmful and neglected manner, it is not surprising they grow up unable to even consider the issues surrounding the sexuality of youth and what should be done about a statue like this or “virtual” kiddie porn that they keep trying to make illegal (and failing… you really can’t make imaginary stuff illegal, but people are in prison for violating those laws anyway because they couldn’t afford to challenge the law that eventually was struck down).
Does anyone have a rearside view of him? Just out of curiosity, of course… Year, that’s it, “Curiosity!”
On the other hand, I don’t think anyone here would complain if he created a sex doll Version of his art. Sex dolls should have an appealing look to them, after all…
check out http://www.moca.org/murakami/# for a tour of this and other works by the artist.
@RandyShota
I didn’t say I was offended. That’s not true at all. On the contrary, I really do like this work of art and I always thought that society is overreacting when it comes to children and sexuality. As a matter of fact, I myself had several sexual encounters whith friends around my age when I was a child and I see absolutely no problem, as long as it stays between kids having their first sex experiences.
Of course, I’m sure that the production of this artwork didn’t involve actual children who would be abused in the process, I simply wondered why no one of this overreacting society was offended yet. I am glad if there is no offence taken by the public, as I said, I was just expecting so.
I find your knowledge and interest in this topic very impressive and certainly agree with you.
I’d Swallow it all!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I’d say the figure is hardly that of a child. In ancient Greece you were an adult at the age of 14, when most boys reached puberty. The US has a pretty fucked up view of child sexuality, as was mentioned in a previous post. The statue is both beautiful and interesting. No one’s mentioned that the circle of cum forms a lasso. Wonder what he’s trying to rope?
Wasn’t the auction held in July?
Thanks for linking my photo, though it appears some could not access it.
The direct link is: http://www.flickr.com/photos/j-no/2491509157/
I am not turned on by this statue but I do indeed L I K E it. It looks like a piece of fun and silliness and colorful and the come as lasso is too silly but as funny as the milk girl nearby.
I often wonder why – regarding this subject – history is more often than not forgotten. If you would like to see some beautiful boys in their much deserved historical context, you should visit this gallery: http://www.veltmaete.nl/ho-pais-kalos/ This statue is in it, on the last page.