Episode 489: Animal Artists cover art

Episode 489: Animal Artists

Episode 489: Animal Artists

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Further reading: https://elephantartgallery.com/blogs/meet Desmond Morris with his favorite Congo painting: Peter/Pierre Brassau and some of his paintings: The so-called donkey painting, and I described it wrong in the episode: Pockets at work: Show transcript: Welcome to Strange Animals Podcast. I’m your host, Kate Shaw. Back in the early days of the podcast I did an episode about animal musicians, which for a long time was my favorite episode. Today let’s visit a similar topic, animals who are visual artists. Back in the 1950s through the 60s, researchers studying how humans make art studied monkeys and apes who were taught how to use a brush and paints. The studies caught the public’s fancy and it became something of a fad to own a piece of art created by an animal—whether it was a monkey or ape, an elephant, or some other animal. One of the earliest big name animal artists was a chimpanzee named Congo. Zoologist Desmond Morris, who was studying creativity in apes and humans, and who was also an artist himself, offered Congo a pencil and paper when he was two years old in 1956. Congo enjoyed drawing and especially liked to draw circles. When Morris eventually gave the chimp paints, Congo was even more enthusiastic. But while he was considered a novelty, he only had one art exhibition while he was alive, a 1957 event arranged by Morris. It wasn’t until 2005 that the remaining paintings were exhibited, along with the art of some other apes, and some of them sold for thousands of dollars. A new exhibit appeared in December of 2019 in the Mayor Gallery in London. One interesting thing is that Morris worked with several apes to see how they drew and painted, but only Congo showed enthusiasm and skill for art. Congo died of tuberculosis in 1964 when he was only ten years old. Also in 1964, a French avant-garde artist named Pierre Brassau exhibited four of his paintings at an art show in Sweden. No one knew who Brassau was, but his paintings were critically acclaimed—except for one critic who wrote, “Only an ape could have done this.” Ahem, yes. That is correct. The artist turned out to be a West African chimpanzee named Peter who lived in a zoo in Sweden. The whole thing started with a Swedish journalist who apparently wasn’t much of a fan of modern art. The journalist persuaded a zookeeper to give Peter a canvas, paints, and brush. At first Peter just ate the paint, but eventually he started making marks on the canvas. The journalist ultimately chose four of the paintings and submitted them to the exhibition under the name Pierre Brassau. One of the paintings sold for the equivalent of about $750 today. But animal artists making modern art isn’t limited to the 1950s and 60s. In 1905 a painting by an unknown artist, J.R. Boronali, went on display in a Parisian salon. It didn’t cause any kind of stir, though, because it was nothing special, until 1910 when word got out that the painting had been made by a donkey. According to the story, an art critic tied a paintbrush to the donkey’s tail and fed the donkey carrots, which made it wag its tail, which dabbed paint on a canvas. I’ve seen the painting, though, and it seems clear that a human artist prepped the canvas by slapping a coat of background paint on it that resembles a red sea and blue sky. There are some dabs and blobs of paint over that in yellow and red, presumably from the donkey. In this case, of course, the donkey wasn’t trying to paint a picture and didn’t even know what was going on behind it, just that it was getting lots of carrots. An avant-garde Russian school of art named itself The Donkey’s Tail in 1912 as a result, though, so that’s pretty neat. More recently, a capuchin monkey named Pockets has become a big-name artist in the animal world. Pockets was donated to a Canadian animal sanctuary after his owner finally realized that capuchin monkeys are wild animals and don’t actually make very good pets. One of the volunteers at the sanctuary gave Pockets the nickname Warhol because of his white hair, which reminded her of the artist Andy Warhol. That gave her the idea to give Pockets some paints and see what he would do with them. It turns out that Pockets really likes to paint. In 2011 the sanctuary held an exhibit of his paintings to help raise money, and since then his paintings have been exhibited in art shows around the world. He’s collaborated with a human artist, who basically paints something and then gives the canvas to Pockets to add to it. His art recently appeared on the cover of an album released by a member of Depeche Mode too. Not all animal artists are apes or monkeys, though. Bini the Bunny stars in a lot of videos where he plays basketball, dances, plays the guitar, and does a lot of other things you would not expect a bunny to do. He also paints. Bini, of course, has been trained to make certain movements, including picking up a paintbrush in his mouth and moving it upward with ...
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