It’s assumed I’m being facetious (or an asshole) when I say that my favourite painter is Congo the Chimpanzee. Not unlike the controversy around his work in the fifties and sixties, the assumption is that the sentiment is intended to disparage painters, which couldn’t be further from the truth. I would just rather one of his works on the wall over any other.1
Congo was born in the wild in 1954, and entered captivity a year later. He began painting at the age of two, when English zoologist, surrealist painter and one-time curator of mammals at the London Zoo, Desmond Morris, offered the chimp a pencil. Morris observed that Congo would draw circles, had a basic sense of colour and composition, and a certainty as to when a work was complete. The chimp would “throw fits” if a painting was taken away before he deemed it complete, and would refuse to continue working on a piece that he considered finished. It was never in doubt that he was making aesthetic decisions about his compositions.
By the age of four, Congo has completed almost 400 paintings. He incorporated repeated motifs, developed a personal style and reportedly took great pleasure in the act of painting.
“No other apes were controlling the mark making and varying the patterns as he was,” Morris recalls. "He revelled in the fact that much bigger marks [than pencil] could be made with little effort, as the paint flowed from his brushes onto the large coloured sheets I provided."2
Famous for his appearances on Morris’ British television show Zootime (and for the debates his work caused about abstract expressionism), Congo’s paintings were collected by Joan Miro, Herbert Read, the Duke of Edinburgh and Pablo Picasso, who reportedly hung one of the ape's pictures on his studio wall after receiving it as a gift from Roland Penrose (who bought two paintings for himself, also).
Morris published a book called The Story of Congo in 1958, as well as several articles in scientific journals. He also curated several exhibitions of paintings by primates. Congo's work was included in numerous other exhibitions at the time, also.
In June of 2005, his paintings were included in an auction at Bonhams, alongside works by Renoir and Warhol. While their works remained unsold, Congo's sold for several times above the estimate. The American collector Howard Hong purchased three of Congo's tempura paintings for over US$25,000.
“We had no idea what these things were worth,” said Howard Rutkowski, director of modern and contemporary art at the auction house. “We just put them in for our own amusement.”3
Congo's work was also included in two important artists’ publications: the first Fluxus Yearbox and the
penultimate issue of the SMS Periodical. The cover of SMS #5 reproduces a painting by Congo as a wrap-around folder, housing works by William Copley, Angus MacLise, Bruce Nauman, Yoko Ono, Mel Ramos, Diane Wakoski, Lawrence Weiner and others (below, bottom).
The inclusion in Fluxus 1 (and, a few months prior, in Fluxus Newspaper No. 1, below) was likely intended as a comment by Maciunas on the democratization of art, moving it from a rarefied occupation of the skilled craftsmen to include anyone (and anything) that set their mind to producing art.
The first time I visited Fluxus scholar Jon Hendricks in New York I was taken to his backyard office, which is lined with floor to ceiling library drawers. At one point I noticed a drawer labelled CONGO. It was both very funny to me, and indicated the meticulous and thorough nature of his work (then as a curator of the Silverman Fluxus collection, now as Yoko Ono's curator and right-hand man).
Congo died of tuberculosis in 1964, at ten years of age - a third the life-expectancy of a male chimp in captivity today.
Now 92 year old, Morris sold off his collection of Congo paintings last year, noting "I am holding onto the serious, scientific research notes that I made during my years working with Congo, but, at 91 years old, I now would rather that the paintings and drawings be made available to other collectors, to whom I hope they will bring as much pleasure as they have to me."
1. It does me no favours that next on my wishlist would be one of George Bush’s bathtub self-portraits.
2. Monkey Painting. Thierry Lenain. London, UK: Reaction Books, 1997. What's not to like about a book that opens a chapter: "The second half of the 1950s was a golden age for monkey artists".
