Aug 27, 2002

Painting Pachyderms

by Theo Douglas

They've been farmers, soldiers, lumberjacks, entertainers, home wreckers, and like many of us periodically unemployed. Now, more than a dozen endangered, out-of-work Asian elephants can add another entry to their resumes: They're professional artists. In a joint venture teaming two sardonic New York-based Russian artists, two Asian elephant sanctuaries, and one Los Angeles-based Web site, Novica.com, paintings completed by 16 Asian elephants in Bali and Thailand can now be purchased online.

This isn't just another showcase of native arts and crafts gone commercial. Half the proceeds from each of these paintings, which sell for $290 to $880, go to benefit the elephants themselves, which are in grave danger of extinction despite their singular capabilities. The story of how all this happened could make a mountain of manuscript as high as an elephant's eye.

"First, we got curious when we learned elephants paint in the first place," recalls Russian émigré Alexander Melamid, who set out down the long road to Southeast Asia in the late 1990s. "We didn't invent the idea. We just introduced this to the Asian countries. But first, we learned how elephants are trained to paint."

Melamid, of Brooklyn, and his collaborator, artist Vitaly Komar, visited a zoo in Toledo, Ohio, to learn how elephants are taught to paint. Then, using a series of connections they'd made, the men took the idea overseas. The added benefit of saving elephant lives became evident en route.

"It totally came accidentally. We had no prior knowledge of elephant conservation," says Melamid, who was moved by the work the elephant sanctuaries were doing. He and his partner periodically have sold elephant paintings through their own organization, the Asian Elephant Art and Conservation Project, and, like Novica, send a portion of the proceeds back overseas.

Then, in 2002, Novica Web site Editor-In-Chief Catherine Ryan learned of the painting elephants, and mounted what is considered to be the first large-scale online sale of elephant art ever.

"I was in Indonesia last March interviewing some of the artists we already work with, and my plane was delayed three days," Ryan says. "I asked, 'Are there any elephants in Bali?" and they said there were, then added, 'Did you know these elephants can paint?' "

At the time, Ryan didn't know that elephants can paint, but in reality hers was not a new discovery – just a new application. Elephants in natural surroundings have long been known to pick up sticks and doodle in the dirt with their trunks.

The pachyderm proboscis has 40,000 muscles – compared with 660 in the entire human body – so wielding a paintbrush is no problem for a beast, which, with proper training, can pull a house down. Filling a canvas often takes an elephant just minutes.

Painting pachyderms have surfaced several times in the 20th century alone – in a 1930s circus in Berlin; in the 1970s and 1980s at the Phoenix Zoo; and currently at the Los Angeles Zoo, where an elephant periodically turns out canvases. In the case of the Arizona elephant, whose name was Ruby, she raised $100,000 a year by painting, Ryan says, money the nonprofit zoo then put toward boarding its charges.

"She started painting for what we refer to as behavioral enrichment. And then, once we worked that out, people wanted to buy the paintings," says Phoenix Zoo spokeswoman Amy Barwegen. "Unfortunately, she passed away in 1998 and we don't have any kind of ongoing program with elephants that paint."

In Southeast Asia, the situation is dire, everyone connected with Novica.com's project agrees. Asian elephants were the workhorses of logging industries there, through much of the 1980s. In response to conservation efforts, many countries there curtailed or ceased logging. In Thailand, officials banned logging in 1989, throwing more than 2,000 domesticated elephants out of work.

It may sound funny – an elephant cashing an unemployment check – but there's actually no such safety net in Southeast Asia. Elephants there often are considered livestock, with little legal provision for their care. Many were simply turned loose when logging – and their period of usefulness – ended. Today in Thailand, half of the country's 4,000 Asian elephants are semi-domesticated, out of work, and facing uncertain futures. On Oct. 18, the National Geographic Channel will turn its lenses on the problem and on the partial solution of having elephants paint - when it airs "Vanishing Giants."

"These elephants get abandoned, and there's not enough forest for them to return to. Since the (logging) ban, their population has (declined) by 30 percent," says "Giants" filmmaker Jennifer Hile, who filmed much of her special in Thailand. "All that's left for them is tourism, elephant shows, and elephant rides."

A much smaller number of elephants rescued by sanctuaries have the option of painting. Whether or not elephants like to paint is still somewhat open to debate. Further, because they're colorblind, their handlers actually select which color the elephants paint in. Hile, who has watched the elephants work, says she thinks they're neutral to the idea of painting, but many zookeepers see the practice as a way to stave off the boredom of captivity.

The artists Melamid and Komar share this perspective and add more than a touch of irony. They feel the idea that paintings by animals can be sold for money makes a snarky statement about the preciousness of the human art world.

"They're as bad or good as human painters. The point is, art is stupid in the first place," says Melamid, who nevertheless sees its purpose as a tool for, in this case, conservation. "We're still looking – everyone is looking – for the innocence, the noble savage, going down to the elephants, the innocent, uncorrupted elephants."

It's a tangled set of motives that produced this continental collaboration between members of the New York art world scene, Southeast Asian mahouts, or elephant handlers, endangered elephants, and cyberspace entrepreneurs.

The results, however, are speaking for themselves: Since Novica began selling the paintings June 17, 282 have found homes. Total sales are more than $100,720 to date, with half of that going back to the elephant sanctuaries. In some cases, people are actually buying more than one painting; Venice resident Maria Gutierrez, a systems analyst for Los Angeles, has purchased three canvases from Novica.

"I love talking about these paintings. You buy the tuna that says 'dolphin safe" and you try to be careful about eating (pork) and you wonder how much of a difference does that make?" Gutierrez says. "But this absolutely does make a difference in helping the animals. I'm pleased to pay several hundreds of dollars for a piece of art, and I really can't think of a better cause."

Free-lance art critic Rosetta Brooks agrees. The paintings, she says, are intriguing abstract canvases by themselves but when coupled with the story of their creation, Melamid and Komar's motivations, and ongoing conservation efforts, they become unique works of art.

"I think the real story needs to be told, so that when people buy these paintings they understand the story," says Brooks, who is a faculty member at Pasadena's Art Center College of Design. "Yes, it's art, but it's really incredible art."