 |
Even at this early stage, a number of distinct regional styles of elephant painting have emerged in Thailand. In the north, elephant painting is lyrical and expressive, characterised by broken brushwork, curvilinear forms, and bold, clear colours. Central Thai elephants prefer darker, cooler colors forest green, black, deep violet which they apply in broad, vigorous brushstrokes that sweep across the canvas from edge to edge, resulting in an emotional tenor of contained rage. In the balmy south, elephant painting is closer to the gentle post-painterly abstraction of Morris Louis and Helen Frankenthaler. Southern elephants tend toward saturated tertiary colours mustardy orange, plum, magenta, turquoise creating canvases with a viscous, creamy, elegant feel.
In the work of these and other animal artists, the impulse that inspired the Fauves at the beginning of the century has finally come to fruition. For animals, most of whom remain art-world outsiders, the unbridled spontaneity and painterly expansiveness relentlessly pursued by artists of our century comes naturally. Indeed, primate and elephant painting has become the ultimate Outsider Art, reinvigorating a moribund art scene and resolving the fin-de- siecle 'crisis in painting' with a bold and uninhibited return to gestural abstraction. Animal artists don't need to move beyond the human to create great artŠ they're already there.
© Komar & Melamid and Mia Fineman 1998
|
 |
