elephant painted for Keith Haring

The elephant painted for Keith Haring was a large decorative object whose changing surface recorded a succession of artistic decisions. Bought for a Diana Vreeland costume show at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, it passed from a pink exhibition prop to an unfinished collaborative object and finally to a completed work by Keith Haring.

From Exhibition Prop to Studio Object

Warhol had bought the elephant for Vreeland’s costume show, where it was meant to be ridden by Marilyn Monroe. It was pink for the exhibition; afterward, it went to Fred Hughes at The Factory. The object thus moved from a theatrical display into the studio, where its purpose and authorship could be reconsidered.

Jean-Michel Basquiat and Victor had already painted on it, though Warhol felt they had added relatively little. Even so, he would have kept the elephant as a Basquiat work. Fred Hughes instead thought it would be better as a work by Haring, and had the surface painted white in preparation for him. The choice turned the elephant’s previous marks into a provisional layer rather than its final identity.

Haring’s Painting

On April 20, 1985, Haring called to say he wanted to spend the day painting the elephant. A week later, he came to the office and completed the work. Its final design was black and white with a red base. Warhol thought he might have preferred it entirely black and white, but still judged the result beautiful and praised Haring’s work.

Warhol described Haring as a cartoonist, while resisting comparisons that made him merely another Peter Max. In Warhol’s view, Haring had something distinct of his own. The elephant’s bold, graphic finish gave that distinction a concrete form: the object was not simply repainted but recast around the visual language Warhol recognized in Haring.

Authorship and Value

The elephant’s successive treatments expose how its identity depended on decisions about who should paint it and whose work it would become. Warhol’s willingness to preserve it as a Basquiat, despite the limited amount of painting, contrasts with Fred Hughes’s decision to prepare it for Haring. The finished object therefore retains a history of possible authorship even as Haring’s painting becomes its defining version.

Warhol placed that artistic judgment beside a blunt account of how prices are made. He said Peter Max received $100,000 for a portrait and described a market in which wealthy buyers establish an artist’s price through social encounters and recommendations to their friends. His comparison between Haring and Max was consequently not only about style: it also distinguished Haring’s artistic character from a reputation Warhol regarded as built through business and social access.