THE DAILY PIC: This shiny thing is a sculpture called The Birth Cry of a Universe, from Takashi Murakami’s latest gala outing at Gagosian Gallery in New York. A lot of critics see Murakami’s art as bling down to its rotten core, but as I’ve argued before, I think the glow in his work perfectly captures the evil sheen of our latest corrupt, metastasized version of consumerist capitalism. The reason the megawealthy buy his work is because its sheen blinds their eyes to the evil they inhabit, lending a special kind of reflective camouflage to his art’s critique. It induces gold-blindness, a new syndrome that only our latest robber barons could suffer from. (© 2014 Takashi Murakami/Kaikai Kiki Co., Ltd., all rights reserved. Courtesy Gagosian Gallery; photo by Robert McKeever)

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