gh BRUSHES ARE HELD IN TEETH, BEAKS AND TRUNKS

Participants to the "ANIMALSART" project include she-raven Gavriusha, piglet Boria, dog Jeck, horse Marushia, the Sumatra orang-outang Chita, chimpanzee Barbie, cow-elephant Martha, dolphins Dashia and Kasia and even a group of Achatina snails. These are the animals that did the painting, they were taught to paint by Ilya Krasnov, employee of the Moscow Zoo. Together with his wife Julia, he intended to give multiple animals an opportunity for self-expression via teaching them to hold the brush and to run the brush over the paper.

At the initial stages of training, it was the owners' and animal trainers' significant responsibility to explain to their nurselings what is required from them. That is not an easy task as none of the animals, except monkeys, have hands. It was the easiest for the cow-elephant: the trunk is a very keen instrument, and the cow-elephant learned to paint practically from the first. The task was more difficult with the she-raven, however, these birds possess such high intelligence, that some lessons were enough. Moreover, after several trial "works" were made, the she-raven obviously changed and even improved the style: confused lines across the entire sheet were replaced by rounded lines directed to the center of the canvas.

The piglet, dog and horse are also clever and they learned to run the brush along the paper keeping the brush in the mouth. The dolphins (the experiment involved two species - the Bottle-nose dolphin (Tursiops truncatus) and the Beluga whale (Delphinapterus leucas) from the Moscow dolphinarium) carried the brush in the mouth, they swam with the brush in the mouth thrusting the head out above the water, guided by their own inspiration the dolphins used to swim up to the trainer who held a sheet of paper above the water and also created unique pictures.

After the initial skills were developed and the animals were taught to "ply the brush", a sheet of white paper was given to the animal to do whatever it liked. Some of the animals - participants to this unusual experiment - refused to paint or were rather indifferent to this action, however, the majority of the animals evidently felt inspiration. Their works were offered to the judgement of visitors' of the museum. Only the snails did not have to be taught, they were simply set on a spot of paint and the snails travelling across the entire sheet left simple traces of their travel, which reminded a lot of palaeontological footprints of the first multicellular animals. The entire process of filling the sheet with drawings was under full control of the project author whose major care was to ensure complete authenticity of the happening, which is testified by the photographs also represented at the exhibition.

"The paintings by many of my wards remind those by children: i.e., tangled lines, spotted composition, says the author of the project. When a child shows the drawing to his/her mother, he/she usually explains: that is a cat, and that is my father coming back from work. The animals are deprived of the capability to explain anything, but who knows, maybe the drawings will help us to reach mutual understanding."

The surprising collection became available to spectators thanks to administration of the Timiryazev Museum. "This project teaches us to be kind and to treat animals respectfully, believes E.A. Chusova, honoured worker of culture, Director of the museum. This exhibition is the first of such kind, it collects the paintings by several animal species, and some painters (for example, the raven) are unique in the world."

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