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Concerning the Inner Life of Elephants  by Rebecca Rickman |
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Most people would think of Pope Leo X as having nothing in common with the Russian artists Komar & Melamid. But they would be wrong. Following a distinguished timeline from the courts of the Babylonian Kings and Kublai Khan to Charlemagne (who received his gift from Harun al-Rashid, the caliph of Baghdad) and England’s King Henry III, we learn, through the writings of Herodotus, Ptolemy, Marco Polo, Tasso, and others, that the elephant was the must-have accessory for any self-respecting menagerie of the discerning autocracy. On March 26, 1514, Annone, the gift of the King of Portugal to the new pontiff, danced to music, performed tricks to amuse the Roman crowds, and was said to genuflect to Pope Leo. Apparently bilingual in both Portuguese and Malayalam (the Indian dialect in Kerala), and with a singular gift to weep on cue, he became a beloved public figure, residing in a custom-built enclosure near the Apostolic Palace that was renamed “Borgo dell’ Elefante.” So intimate was his relationship with the Pope that when Anno died prematurely, a life-size memorial fresco was commissioned from the court painter of the time, Raphael. His demise led to the circulation of a satirical last will and testament, in which Anno bequeathed his worldly effects and bodily parts to the cardinals of the Curia. Convinced as we may wish to be of Anno’s innate talent for tears and performance art, his domesticated personality fulfilled the public’s desire for tame danger at the expense of his species personality. By the nineteenth century, the ability of the elephant to subordinate itself to human purpose was seen as a transfiguration, which the animal allegedly welcomed. The reward for this familiarity with humans was a journey that led from wilderness to beast of burden, from exotic pet to endangered species, and from a position of centrality to marginality. The perception of commonalities in human and animal behavior is one of five types of anthropomorphism described by psychologist Randall Lockwood: personification, superficial, allegorical, explanatory, and applied.The superimposition upon animals of human traits, frailties, and predilections extends back to the origins of myth and fable and forward to Babar, Disney, and the chimpanzee tea party. The elephant, then, depending upon your cultural perspective, may represent the giver of Good Fortune, the Lord of Beginnings, the Patron of Learning, strength, fidelity, a pink apparition after an alcoholic binge, wisdom, compassion, conjugal felicity, a dubiously cute character in a post-colonial bedtime tale, immortality, or the Republican Party. In other words, this unsuspecting animal evolved into a Rorschach test for the collective unconscious. The enduring power of the anthropomorphic fantasy must be the idea that residing within the body of this “wild” beast lies a quasihuman personality—presumably just waiting to be coaxed forth in much the same manner as the sculptural “prisoners” trapped inside Michelangelo’s blocks of marble. Even Seneca fell into this trap with his comment that the elephant had “a fellowship with the human race.” This concept of the elephants’ “inner life potential” has resulted in attempts to “civilize” elephants by teaching them to read, solve mathematical problems, jump through flaming hoops, and, yes, paint abstract art! The artist Joan Fontcuberta’s scientific alter ego— Dr. Peter Ameisenhaufen—even discovered in Kenya a rare breed of flying pachyderm, to which he gave the original taxonomic label “aerophant.” It is into this rich coalescence of politically incorrect fact and fantasy that Komar & Melamid have inserted themselves and their darkly playful subversion. Somewhere between the elephant act at Ringling Bros. circus, the hipsterism of outsider art, and the granola-sincere world of the environmental elite, this Asian Elephant Art and Conservation Project, conceived by two boys from downtown Red Square, has landed to unnerve the bourgeoisie once more. Komar & Melamid will be the first to say that theirs is not an original idea. Ruby, in the Phoenix Zoo, has already been painting for two decades. And their initial collaboration was not with Thai elephants but Renee, an experienced pro in Ohio’s Toledo Zoo. In addition, they had previously worked with a dog (performance: Canine Art (Teaching a Dog to Draw, [1978]) and, more recently, taught Mickey the chimpanzee to take photographs with a Polaroid camera, which were exhibited at the 1999 Venice Biennale. Not content with making artists of elephants, Komar & Melamid are now planning a line of elephant-inspired interior decor. A form of elephantine Omega Workshop, perhaps? Whoever thought that the Bloomsbury Group would inadvertently save the Thai teak forests? Certainly not the workshop’s founder, Roger Fry, who saw no distinction between the fine and applied arts, but might have balked at culture academies for the four-footed. Buried within the conceptual framework of this project, there is a shadowy simulacrum of the artworld ecosystem itself. Even as they undermine it with parody, Komar and Melamid relish its exploitation in order to raise money for the elephants. When all is said and done, is the art Art? Is it satirizing our naïveté about the environment, or is it, perhaps, a plot to undermine Thomas Kinkade’s Painter of Light empire, disguised as an occupational retraining program for redundant pachyderms? No one’s telling. Least of all Komar & Melamid themselves. Further Reading
The picture of Babar is from Babar and Father Christmas by Jean De Brunhoff Galleries Directory | Levy Gallery Artists Registry | Publications & Artists | Email Moore College of Art and Design |
| For more on contemporary artists, we recommend these websites:
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World Wide Arts Resource |
 Artext |
 Artnet |
 The Levy Gallery Artists Registry |
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