Art, shoplifting nuns, and nude rambling

Lets talk about art.

This week news emerged of a person who wandered into the Tate Modern and degenerately defaced a hugely valuable painting. In fact it was the vary famous Rothko “Black on Maroon”, reportedly worth tens of millions of pounds. The man apparently walked in, and scrawled some message in large, unreadable script in one of the bottom corners. Not much appears to be known about the man. He’s 26, Russian, and his name is Vladimir Umanets. He claims to have developed “Yellowism” with another person called Marcin Lodyga. He doesn’t appear to very clear about what Yellowism is however. It is apparently “neither art, nor anti-art”. Umanets has been arrested.

I suppose this idiot is just another pretentious publicity seeker, eager for fame and fortune. I hope he ends up in prison. I hate vandalism. He’s no better than the stupid 14-year-old who paints his ‘tag’ on a wall. I don’t understand that type of graffiti either. It makes me think of a tom-cat pissing against a fence to mark his territory.

Art does seem to get people worked up, and I can’t understand why. If you don’t like someone’s art, so what? Look the other way, make your own. Life is too short for bile and vitriol over something so trivial. Damien Hirst has donated a huge work to the Town of Ilfracomb in Devon, just down the road from my mother. It’s a bronze statue of a naked, pregnant woman, and it’s about 20m tall or something. It is a little odd, but I rather like it. There is much wailing and gnashing of teeth in south west England however. Again, I just don’t understand it. Even if you don’t like the piece, you can’t deny that it is impressive, hugely valuable, and donated to the town free of charge by one of the most sought after artists on the planet. It’s a massive tourist magnet for a community which depends on tourism. Why are you moaning about it? You’re mad! There are people saying ridiculous things about it being ‘offensive’ and ‘grotesque’. Gift horse – mouth, think about it nutters!

Here’s some CCTV footage of a nun stealing beer from a convenience store. I don’t know if she’s a real nun or not, but I hope she is.

And finally, I just need to mention that Stephen Gough, the naked rambler guy, has been released from prison in Scotland again and is making his way, naked of course, towards his home in Hampshire. I’m not quite sure how he managed to get himself released, since he was jailed for five months on 13th Sept, but he has and he’s over the border according to the Daily Record. Last time he was released he was rearrested within three days I think and he hadn’t reached England. I suspect that he’s pretty much home and dry now since he’s in England. Gough is somewhere between eccentric and bat-shit crazy. I don’t know where to put him on the scale, but I do have a certain admiration for him, and I hope he makes it home.