Pachyderm Picassos? - Brief Article

Art in America, May, 2000

The Moscow-born artist-team Vasily Komar and Alexander Melamid are known for off-beat conceptual works loaded with social comment. A current project is aimed at preserving the Asian elephant, whose numbers in Southeast Asia have dwindled at an alarming rate in recent years, from 11,000 to only around 3,000. In countries such as Thailand and India, deforestation has ruined their natural habitat, and a ban on teak logging has put the elephants and their trainers (mahouts) out of work.

To raise public awareness of the crisis, Komar and Melamid have been teaching elephants how to use their trunks to paint on paper and canvas. In 1997 they established the Asian Elephant Art and Conservation Project (AEACP) to promote and distribute colorful, pachyderm abstractions in order to raise funds for elephant conservation. Proceeds from sales go to organizations set up to protect the animals. The team began working with elephants at the Toledo Zoo in Ohio in 1995, and later trained Ruby, an elephant at the Phoenix Zoo whose works now generate in excess of $100,000 annually. The first AEACP "art academy" opened in Lampang, Thailand, in fall 1998, and a similar camp has since been established in Bali. Most recently, an AEACP project was initiated in Kerala, India. Komar and Melamid presented their first lecture on "elephant art" in 1998 at the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles, and last year featured elephant paintings in their Russian pavilion display at the Venice Biennale.

This spring, the artists launched a series of fund-raising events, beginning at Christie's in New York, where a silent auction of elephant art brought $75,000 in late March. An AEACP exhibition appears at the Goldie Paley Gallery, Moore College of Art and Design in Philadelphia, May 31-Aug. 7 (on view while the Republican National Convention is in town). Another AEACP show and auction will take place in Israel on June 6, at the Jerusalem Zoo. For more information about the project, see the AEACP Web site (www.elephantart.com).