Banksy Ordered to Clean Up His Elephant Act

The elephant may have been in the room, but by the end of its stay it had lost its sheen. Tai, the 38-year-old painted pachyderm that was the centrepiece of the first major US show by the British graffiti artist Banksy, was scrubbed down on Sunday on the orders of the Los Angeles department of animal services.

Visitors to the show on Sunday, the final day of the three-day installation, were met by an elephant-coloured elephant standing in a mock living room. On previous days the elephant had been painted red from trunk to tail and adorned with gold fleur-de-lys to match the wallpaper in the living room.

Ed Boks, general manager of the animal services department, ordered that "the elephant be completely scrubbed down to bare skin and that a child-safe face paint be used".

The department had initially granted Banksy a permit to use the elephant, which he had hired from local company Have Trunk Will Travel. But when officials saw the result in a crowded, celebrity-laden opening on Thursday night, they tried to rescind the licence.

The department, however, had to give five days' notice, by which time the exhibition would have closed. Mr Boks instead ordered the elephant scrubbed clean. "The paint they had been using, although non-toxic, according to government regulations was unsafe and even illegal to use the way they had been using it," Mr Boks said.

In a city that takes its animal welfare seriously, the exhibit caused something of a fuss. Whether Banksy, the reclusive 28-year-old British artist and provocateur, had intended to allow the elephant's plight to distract from his grand themes of poverty, political hypocrisy and the future of the planet is debatable.

Nevertheless, the elephant featured on the front pages of newspapers from Los Angeles to New York, helping to draw thousands to the show. An hour before its scheduled end on Sunday there were an estimated 2,000 people queueing to enter the exhibit.