Takashi Murakami, Eyeball Artist

With today's post, I would like to take a short digression from the clinical world of ophthalmology and step into the enchanting realm of cartoon eyeballs. If ever there had been an artist who captured eyeballs with more passion, humor, and sometimes perversion, it would be the brilliant and beloved Takashi Murakami. Anyone who has ventured out to a Murakami exhibit will no doubt agree that his art gladdens the heart with its bedazzling display of cartoon eyes. Raphael Rubenstein in Art of America writes: "Perhaps not since Dali painted an eye-filled curtain for Hitchcock's Spellbound (1945) has an artist been so ocular obsessed."

I first discovered Murakami at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston ten years ago. I then payed homage to his exhibits at the Institute of Contemporary Art, The Brooklyn Art Museum, and finally the Guggenheim in Bilbao, Spain. The eyeball galaxies that populate his canvases are irresistable, making his shows (clearly) addictive. A Murakami eyeball pin to adorn the lapel of my white coat: 10 euros. Murakami mushroom painting: $313,000. A trip to Bilbao to see cartoon eyeballs: priceless.

Superflat, Murakami's hallmark style, was inspired by the flat style of Japanese anime. Like Andy Warhol, Murakami strives to create "low art" and sell it as "high art" to the highest bidder. In 2001, Murakami introduced "Wink" to non-museum going masses with enormous multi-eyed balloon sculptures , that hovered delightfully over the crowds in Grand Central terminal. Since then, his work traveled around the world with stunning exhibits, becoming more and more accessible to mainstream culture. To the delight of haute couture, he also collaborated with Marc Jacobs to create the the Cherry Blossom Limited Edition, Multicolore and Eye Love handbag lines.

The critical theorist, Hiroki Azuma thinks the "multitude of eyes" in Murkamai's work "corresponds to the painting's deficiency of space, to its equation of gaze with castration's dysfunction." I do not care for equating gaze with castration's dysfunction (whaaa??), honestly, but I agree eyes are a great way to fill up empty space. So, for a lifetime achievement award for Eyeball Artist of the people, I nominate Takashi Murakami.