GOP Elephant Art & the Bigger Picture

The recent public exhibition of portraits painted by George W Bush, retired President of the United States, has managed to throw a lot of people into a tizzy. Critiques of his work ranged from relatively benign (it’s “simple-minded”), to strangely overwrought (“dangerous”), but every commentator seemed to assume that his paintings were art. As if it was perfectly self-evident that Bush was making art and not, well, merely painting stuff. Which got me thinking: can elephants be artists? By this, I mean not only Republican elephants, but actual elephants. Asian elephants, to be exact. For several years now, a group…