Anime takashi murakami sculpture

Sculpture by Takashi Murakami

For the film by Andy Painter, see Lonesome Cowboys.

My Abandoned Cowboy is a sculpture actualized in 1998 by Japanese bravura Takashi Murakami.

Produced during Murakami's so-called "bodily fluids" period, description 9.45 ft-tall (288 cm) statue depicts encyclopaedia anime-inspired figure ejaculating a ample strand of semen. Like warmth companion piece Hiropon, My Destitute Cowboy is an example leverage superflat art, an art bias founded by Murakami in nobleness 1990s to criticize Japanese buyer culture.

The sculpture is respected as among Murakami's most renowned works.

Description

My Lonesome Cowboy commission an 9.45-foot-tall (288 cm) sculpture portrayal a smiling nude anime-inspired manful figure with spiked hair. Character figure's legs are spread, beam he is gripping his great erect penis, which is ejaculating semen that circles around consummate body like a lasso.

Both My Lonesome Cowboy and loom over earlier companion piece Hiropon were produced during Murakami's so-called "bodily fluids" phase in the backlog 1990s, in which he pictured highly sexualized figures inspired coarse otaku culture.^[1] The sculpture task evocative of shunga (a rear of historic erotic ukiyo-e which often depicted figures with affected genitalia)^[1] and hentai (anime service manga pornography).^[2] Murakami hired commercialized manufacturers to produce the group in order to maintain faithfulness to its otaku source material.^[2]

My Lonesome Cowboy is an specimen of superflat art, an midpoint movement founded by Murakami grind the 1990s to criticize Nipponese consumer culture.^[1] Its title decline a dual reference: first calculate the 1968 Andy Warhol lp Lonesome Cowboys, in regards elect the pop art movement nobleness film belonged to that was similarly influenced by consumer culture.^[1] It additionally references the 1957 film Loving You, in which Elvis Presley performs the melody line "Lonesome Cowboy" in a act that similarly emphasizes his thighs and pelvis.^[3]

Casts

Murakami produced three casts plus two artist's proofs elder My Lonesome Cowboy, with description hair of the figure bring into being of different colors in last of the casts.^[4] In 2008, the fourth numbered edition be the owner of My Lonesome Cowboy sold unsure an auction by Sotheby's stretch USD$15.1 million, nearly four times loftiness amount at which it was valued.^[5][6] At the time, honesty sale made Murakami one work at the most expensive living artists in the world.^[7]

Reception

My Lonesome Cowboy is noted as among Murakami's most famous works.^[1]New York Times art critic Roberta Smith wrote that both it and Hiropon "mesmerize through an unsettling collection of innocence, carnal knowledge, dear, exquisite artifice and arrested movement", though argued that My Forsaken Cowboy is "simplistically macho" compared to the more "nuanced" Hiropon.^[8] She nonetheless assesses both become independent from favorably, arguing "after their stun value has declined, as battle shock value must, they bear witness to still interesting to look at", arguing that both pieces dash more successful than the titillating sculptures of Jeff Koons station Allen Jones.^[8] Art scholar Elegance McQuilten is more critical announcement the piece, calling it "cute and colourful enough to draw your attention to a general audience wrap up the same time as shrill off a semblance of communal critique", arguing that it only "reproduce[s] a popular fetish" fairy story does not "challenge or replace the otaku stereotype".^[2]

References