The art class starts serenely. Standing poised before its easel, the creature’s tail swishes and ears gently flap. Then, brush held in the tip of its trunk, this most imposing of land mammals deftly drags a streak of paint across the page. At first the sense of awe limits itself to the dexterity at work, but as the seemingly arbitrary squiggle takes on the likeness of the creature itself, wonder fills the air in gasps of “Oh my goodness!” from the watching American tourists. Art has arrived in the animal kingdom.
there’s a new master of line, form and colour on the scene, and its name is Jumbo. Or rather, their names are Boombim, Hong, Jaab, Paya, Somjai, Wanpen and more – ex-logging elephants in Thailand who are able to paint pictures of everything from flowers and landscapes to their very own ‘self-portraits’
It didn’t take much searching to learn that elephants do indeed possess a remarkable painterly skill when faced with the blank canvass all artists must confront. Blessed with trunks dextrous beyond their size, they are capable of painting with incredible detail. What’s more, under the direction of their handlers – and sometimes with a little guidance from artists of the human kind – these expressive animals can even create recognisable depictions of objects and animals in the physical world.
The individual elephants do have distinctive styles and seem to take pleasure in what they are doing – points that favour them having an aesthetic sense. However, the mammoth uncertainty is whether these giant animals can themselves distinguish the beauty, let alone symbolic meaning, of their creations. It seems unlikely. For starters, elephants cannot see in the same range of colours as we do, and rely on other factors such as movement and smell to distinguish objects and other animals.
Elephants aren’t the first animals to have entered into art. In the 1950s, a chimpanzee named Congo became famous under the tutelage of zoologist and painter Desmond Morris. Three 1957 pieces by Congo were auctioned off for over £14,000 in 2005 alongside artworks by Renoir and Warhol. Bidders went bananas over the chimp’s paintings, but they were abstract works, and unlike Picasso – or some of our elephants – Congo never learned the ropes of realism before his forays into the nonfigurative.
From dogs and dolphins to parrots and pigs, other animals have also demonstrated proficiency with a paintbrush that belied their species. Yet it does appear that non-human primates, in spite of the fact that they cannot master identifiable pictorial images like elephants, better appreciate the aesthetic value of their work. Koko and her partner Michael, well-known sign language-speaking gorillas, love to paint, and both apes have named their paintings, despite the difficulty of discerning visually what they represent.
If nothing else, all this animal artistry makes us rethink the sacredness of human consciousness, though in the case of the elephants it has also had more pragmatic effects
