Some rather impressive art from China, employing an interesting choice of medium: the humble watermelon, carved and decorated into a variety of artful representations, all eminently edible of course.
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Few would deny an original work by Type Moon’s top illustrator 武内崇 / Takashi Takeuchi, of Fate/stay night and Tsukihime fame, to be one capable of commanding a high price, and worth it, but a recent auction in which a single page from a sketchbook, featuring but one rather rough pencil illustration, certainly turned heads when the auction concluded at an impressive ¥456,000.
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Coming upon much more 春画 / shunga, the Japansese erotic art of antiquity prone to make the contemporary stuff look tame, I though it time to make a few galleries of them, in addition to the earlier gallery. I should furnish you with a warning before you proceed – some of these images frankly put /d/ to shame in strangeness, and I reproduce uncritically as historical art illustrations which might otherwise be considered in less than exemplary taste.
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Some enterprising and creative soul has gone to the trouble of etching a refrigerator and a Nintendo DS with characters from Rozen Maiden, and the items are currently up for auction, with a starting price of ¥30,000 for the fridge and ¥20,000 for the DS. For some reason buyers have been slow to pick up on this most creative offering. Images of the items are below.
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Artist Hisashi Tenmyouya’s “RX-78-2 Kabuki-mono 2005 Version”, went for HK$4.8 million (about $600,000) at a recent Hong Kong auction; certainly a gorgeous illustration by any estimation. Hisashi Tenmyouya covers both classical and more modern themes in his art, though always in a finely executed classical style.
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Japan hasn’t changed a bit? It certainly seems some things are a constant presence. See below for the full comparison (H), and here for more ancient manga. Source here.
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“My Lonesome Cowboy”, a figure created by Japanese pop artist 村上隆 / Takashi Murakami, was auctioned off at $15 million in a New York auction, vastly exceeding the expected price of $3-4 million.
The 254cm high figure (including his ejaculation, otherwise roughly life size), which might thus also be called a statue, depicts a naked man engaged in an act of fantastic onanism, in the style of a shonen manga. It was created using steel, acrylic and fiberglass in 1998.
According to Sotheby’s, the highest price previously fetched by Murakami’s work was “Panda”, at a positively meager $3 million, so this represents something of a triumph for him. The identity of the buyer will likely remain a closely guarded secret for reasons we can only guess at.
More detail of this outstanding artwork is below, as well as another fine work along the same lines. See here for an interview with the great artist explaining the work. Here is an English language report on the auction.
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Did you think tentacle porn was a recent development? Or, for that matter, erotic manga? Not at all, as Japan possesses a long and glorious history of erotic art going back centuries (as in fact do most cultures), called 春画 / Shunga, which flourished particularly during the reign of the Tokugawa Shogunate.
I came accross an interesting representative sample, and some of the themes may be familiar to you, though some are perhaps more bizarre than contemporary works (unless you spend much time on /d/, in which case these subjects will all be familiar to you). There is even an illustration of someone using an ancient dakimakura. I am mirroring most of the images below, though I leave the illustration of man and his faithful companion as a dubious incentive to visit the originating site, if you dare.
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