One unpopular opinion and an enraged bird

First of all, I think the whole red equality sign thingie on Facebook is really sweet. I don't think the Supreme Court is going to get anywhere this time round, but it just reinforces the fact that young peoples' hearts are in the right place and the country will eventually shift towards equality-- kicking and screaming all the way.

Now, there was another minor kerfuffle rolling round the internet, about this guy who had this to say about a Picasso he put his elbow through: 

“My feeling was, it’s a picture, it’s my picture, we’ll fix it,” Mr. Wynn told The New Yorker in 2006, recalling how the painting was damaged. “Nobody got sick or died. It’s a picture. It took Picasso five hours to paint it.”

Now the consensus among artists is that this guy is a giant entitled douchebag, which is difficult to argue with. However, I have agree with him about the painting. Not because it's a Picasso I don't much like, but because a certain healthy irreverence in regards to art is refreshing. I don't think we should run through museums drawing sharpie mustaches on everything, but I do think it's important to remember that paintings are just objects (sculptures too, of course).
In no way does being 'just an object' devalue art as art. But I think it's become standard to view art, especially art with a famous name signed on it, as inviolate. For example, there are some Michelangelo sculptures that are just straight-up weird: 

.......

Now, Michelangelo is my favorite artist, sculptor, fencer and all-around cranky bastard. I LOVE Michelangelo. And I'd look at this sculpture and think I was missing something. I would stare and stare at these lumps and disjointed joints and think, "this is by the greatest sculptor of his time, but it looks all wrong. There's something wrong with me for thinking that." It was only when I looked at is an artifact, without my beloved Michelangelo's name attached, that I stopped being distressed. It's flawed sculpture, made by a man who might have been having an off day and certainly didn't look at nude women very often. It's just an object. 

As an artist myself, I used to struggle with this a lot. I would make a drawing I considered perfect, overwork a small detail, smudge everything out, and wind up in hysterics. As I got older and made more pieces (and dropped some and spilled coffee on others) the artifacts themselves became less and less important. I knew I could fix anything that got damaged, and if not there was more where that came from. It was liberating to stop attaching much value to individual pieces (though when my cat jumped on a picture two hours before going to a show I lost three years off my life, so maybe I'm not as liberated as I think). 

I guess I'd like art to be a living, vital thing, and too much reverence makes for boring art and boring people. And have you seen how amazing restorations are these days? 

Dude.

So I'm not too worried about that Picasso. 

Now, apropos of absolutely nothing, here is a capercailie terrorizing a Swedish reporter:

It gets good about halfway through

That's all I got. 

--Isis