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The Galleries at Moore Komar & Melamid’s Asian Elephant Art and Conservation Project—Online |
 
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The online exhibition offers:
In 2000 the Republican Party helds its National Convention in Philadelphia (site of the Galleries at Moore). Inspired by the advent of so many Grand Old Pachyderms, the Galleries at Moore presented “Komar & Melamid’s Asian Elephant Art and Conservation Project.” The exhibition continues online. At the dawn of the new century and in the midst of political maneuvering, Komar & Melamid examine displacements in our value system: politics as spectacle and entertainment, theory and criticism as fashion, commerce and new technology as ends in themselves. Using satire and humor rather than hand-wringing and finger-pointing, the artists invite their audiences to probe and question the vagaries of contemporary culture. Komar & Melamid have a history of provoking mirth, outrage, and admiration. They began with participation in the “Bulldozer Show“ in Moscow—so called because the government used bulldozers to drive away the exhibitors and destroy the artwork. They have created their own country, TransState, a federation of nations each consisting of one person and comprising a territory covering the body surface of its citizens. They have proved that they have the technique and insight to recreate the work of anyone from Roger van der Weyden to Gerhard Richter. Using an unassailable benchmark for market research, they recently completed a poll, sampling one-third of the earth’s population, to construct “paint-by-number” formulas for the “most wanted” and “most unwanted”paintings. And they have launched the Asian Elephant Art and Conservation Project (AEACP), at once stirring up the artworld, amusing the public, and bringing measurable benefit to the ecologically-threatened elephants of Thailand. Reversing the usual progression from critical attention to public awareness, this already-notorious collaborative partnership was included in Dokumenta 8 (1987), the Venice Biennale (1997), and is now represented in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Komar & Melamid’s Asian Elephant Art and Conservation Project is at once a serious non-profit organization that cooperates closely with the World Wildlife Fund and a continuation of themes familiar from the artists’ previous work. Having lost their jobs because of strict anti-logging laws in the late 1980s, Thailand’s 3,000 domesticated elephants have been forced to move into the crowded cities where they perform circus tricks, barely earning enough for their handlers (mahouts) to feed them. By establishing three Elephant Art Academies, Komar & Melamid have empowered these poverty-stricken pachyderms to make ends meet by picking up brushes and taking the artworld by storm. Who is an artist?
Animal-created art has been a controversial topic since the end of the nineteenth century. There are no commercial galleries or dealers specializing in this genre; the museums that collect it tend to be more interested in science than in fine art. Yet the subject continues to elicit opinion from artists and critics, who have included Joan Miró, Willem de Kooning, Salvador Dalí, Peter Blake, Meyer Shapiro, and H. W. Janson. In 1995, the issues basic to the discussion were propelled into the public consciousness by Masson and McCarthy’s bestseller When Elephants Weep. Approximately 30 elephants currently paint in American zoos; it was after collaborating on a painting with Renée, a member of this “Post-Human” school at the Toledo (Ohio) Zoo, that Komar & Melamid conceived the Thai project to resolve the plight of that country’s elephants. Today, the AEACP is literally allowing the elephants and the mahouts of Thailand to support themselves with dignity. The careers of both artists began in Soviet Russia. Both were born in Moscow during the final convulsions of World War II. Trained in the state-sanctioned academic style, they met while sketching cadavers at the morgue. In the 1970s, they were the only artists who attempted to exhibit “Sots Art, ” a Soviet bloc version of Pop Art. Much as American Pop appropriated commercial images to comment on our immersion in consumer goods, Sots Art appropriated images from official posters and political/cultural icons in a comment on over-produced ideology. Identified as dissidents, Komar & Melamid lost their teaching jobs and their memberships—required for working—in the Graphic Artists Organization. With Glasnost, the two received exit visas and emigrated, first to Israel, then to the United States. Komar & Melamid challenge all comers—at the same time executing their work with a clear commitment to artistic integrity. With strong parallels to the “Fumistes” of fin-de-siècle Paris (who used collaboration, non-traditional media, and performance to attack pretension), Komar & Melamid use their high-intensity wit and artistic skill to skewer the most cherished tenets of every domain. Satirical pictures show an ideal world (a factory for producing sky-blue smoke); ironic views record political landmarks (Hitler and E. T. appear at Yalta); posters and billboards advertise capitalist ventures (“We buy and sell souls”). History, political systems, dreams and values are examined and exploded. Theirs is the least popular and most difficult worldview—the tragi-comic. Life-long exiles whose first emigration was inward to their own nation of TransState, Komar & Melamid provide no answers but suggest that we reconsider which questions are important. |
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