When Elephants Paint: The Quest of Two Russian Artists to Save the Elephants of Thailand

For centuries elephants in Thailand have been revered as a national symbol, worshiped as living gods and employed as beasts of burden in the nation's thriving timber industry. But when logging was banned in Thailand in 1990, these noble animals fell on hard times. Reduced to performing tricks for tourists by day and illegal heavy labor by night, Thailand's elephants were exhausted, malnourished, and dying in alarming numbers.
Hearing of their plight, a pair of unlikely heroes came to the rescue, Wildly eccentric Russian emigre artists Vitaly Komar and Alexander Melamid devised a brilliant scheme: to create the world's first quadruped occupational retraining program-a network of art schools for unemployed elephants. Taking a cue from elephant trainers in a number of American zoos, Komar and Melamid taught the animals to hold brushes in their trunks and apply paint to canvas. And the results were astonishing: Not only did the elephants' paintings closely resemble the expansive gestural work of such Abstract Expressionist artists as Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, and Franz Kline, but the pachyderm painters also began to develop clearly distinct regional styles-lyrical and expressive in the northern Thai school, subtle and atmospheric in the east, dynamic and angst ridden in the central school.
Sanctioned by the World Wildlife Fund, the Asian Elephant Art and Conservation Project has been a remarkable success; paintings by some of the most talented elephant artists have been auctioned at Christie's for thousands of dollars, generating funds to provide proper care for the elephants and support for their trainers.
When Elephants Paint follows Komar and Melamid and their eclectic entourage through Thailand's lush jungles and steaming cities, describing the odd encounters and creative cajoling that helped turn this seemingly whimsical idea into a concrete, beneficial reality. Illustrated with more than 100 photographs, including actual elephant paintings, this riotously funny and provocative book offers a valuable lesson in wildlife conservation and startling revelations about the nature of art itself.

Arts & Photography

Komar & Melamid

Fineman, Mia

Eggers, Dave.

History & Criticism

Harper

What Is the What: The Autobiography of Valentino Achak Deng: A Novel

Literature & Fiction

Genre Fiction

Penguin Books, Limited (UK)

How We Are Hungry

Penguin

How We Are Hungry (EE)

Short Stories & Anthologies

Read once, no marks or bent pages. Cover has small creases.

What Is The What

Biographies & Memoirs

Arts & Literature

Vintage, 2007

You Shall Know Our Velocity

Will and Hand, two young Americans, decide to travel around the world handing over large amounts of money to those who need it. This trip will, they hope, be an answer to the overwhelming grief they feel after their friend's death. But, as they soon find out, nothing is quite so simple.

Contemporary

Hamish Hamilton Ltd.

As editor of McSweeney's ('America's most interesting publication' in the words of Time Out), Dave Eggers has been partly responsible for a rejuvenation of short fiction in the USA. At the same time he has also developed his own unique, funny, endlessly inventive take on the short story form.How We Are Hungry collects the best of his recent (long) short fiction, none published before in the UK. It is the perfect companion not only to his other books but to the (very short) short stories he has been writing weekly for the Guardian magazine.

Mcsweeney's

McSweeney's

Seven-year-old Max likes to make noise, get dirty, ride his bike without a helmet and howl like a wolf. In any other era, he would be considered a boy. In 2007, he is considered willful and deranged. His home life is problematic. His parents are divorced; his father, immature and romantic, lives in the city. His mother has taken up with a younger man who steals quarters from the change bowl in the foyer. Driven by a series of pressures internal and external, Max leaves home, jumps in a boat and sails across the ocean to a strange island where giant beasts reign. The "Wild Things" is from Maurice Sendak's visionary classic. This is an all-ages adventure, full of wit and soul, that explores the chaos of youth while Max explores the chaos of the world around him. The live-action film, co-written by Spike Jonze and Dave Eggers, and directed by Jonze, is due this autumn.

Wild Things

Teen & Young Adult

Hamish Hamilton

McSweeney's. 28

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Books by Eggers, Dave.