Totally un-ironic ero figure fetches $15 million

Gawker reports that this sculpture of a guy ejaculating by “Superflat” artist Takashi Murakami was sold for $15.1 million to an anonymous telephone bidder at a Sotheby’s auction.  The fiberglass figure, “My Lonesome Cowboy,” has a companion piece of a woman squirting milk from her teats entitled “Hiropon” (pictured left, because that’s the one I prefer).  The two are often exhibited alongside the painting “Milk” as a backdrop.  Coincidentally, Drexel U.’s The Smart Set has an interesting article exploring the Superflat style.

And Japanese figure hobbyists think his face sculpts aren’t super at all…

(Additional note… I believe both pieces were part of a private collection already, so Murakami probably didn’t get a cent from this.)

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Brian Hibb’s Tilting At Windmills column has moved to Comic Book Resources, and in this column presents the clearest explanation of why the Fantagraphics/Diamond deal holds significance for many, and also offers justifications for the dedicated comic shop amid growing shelves of comics in traditional book stores.

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Via Mainichi, a recent poll by the National Congress of Parents and Teachers Associations of Japan purports that 2.5% of fifth-year elementary students in Japan regularly play adult video games with sexual content.  Given the number of eroge that are sold as downloads, and more importantly the amount of pirated porn games on the net, the figure actually seems conservative.  Or maybe the other 32.5% of students who do play eroge were smart enough not to admit to it.

The same survey also found that 95% of Japanese students own a video game console.  How they still manage to beat us so handily in international testing, I do not know…