Here's a "painting" that is on exhibit in the lobby of the condominium in which I've lived since 2009. It's been there as long as I have been. It is unsigned -- the "artist" hasn't been courageous enough to inscribe it. In the privacy of my aggrieved mind, I attribute it to creature-of-my-imagination whom I call Fango Nero (Italian for "black mud"). I conceive Fango Nero to be a pioneer, in employing not brush or palette knife but instead a standard Home Depot 6" paint roller. I don't blame Nero for leaving his work of art unnamed and unsigned. After all, it's a patently disgraceful, reprehensible piece of trash masquerading as art and that has no business affixed to anyone's walls. I don't know what prompted the architects or the contractors to buy this thing and hang it in my lobby. Perhaps they fell for a scam, or perhaps they were supporting a needy uncle.
So many accomplished artists in this world and I must be afflicted with these splotches! What a waste of space!
That's what I thought, these last twelve years, until I had a sudden epiphany.
This painting is not the work of my imaginary painter Fango Nero, or any human being. No, not at all. It's the achievement of an elephant. Some of my readers will have seen videos of elephants painting. If the professor of art or the mahout provides an artistically-inclined elephant with paint and a brush, by golly, he or she will grasp the brush handle with the ever-useful trunk and paint you something in the abstract impressionist line.
Here is a pachydermal production:
It's quite a bit more interesting than the black and white paint roller job, is it not. I like the cheerful interplay of the two well-chosen colors and the way that the long pink lines, almost imprisoned by the green, suggest both freedom and delight. It would be a greater pleasure by far to encounter this canvas several times a day than the muddy black one.
The bottom line: Fango bad, Dumbo good.
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