Banksy's painted elephant riles animal activists

The latest exhibit by British guerrilla artist Banksy has drawn the ire of animal activists and the Los Angeles Department of Animal Services.

The Los Angeles exhibit, which opened Friday in an anonymous downtown warehouse, includes an art installation of a living-room scene in which an elephant painted in a red and gold design stands along with the furniture. The 38-year-old female elephant, named Tai, was given a nontoxic paint job.

Ed Boks, head of the Los Angeles Department of Animal Services, ordered the paint removed Sunday and that a child-safe face paint be used instead.

"The paint they had been using, although nontoxic, according to government regulations was unsafe and even illegal to use the way they had been using it," he said.

Boks added that he had consulted with animal rights activists and the city attorney's office before issuing written orders about the painted elephant, which was provided by the company Have Trunk Will Travel.

On Sunday, Tai appeared in the exhibit unpainted. Both animal control officers and Tai's handlers have been monitoring her welfare, seeing that she is regularly fed, given water, taken on breaks and driven home to a ranch at night.

Celebrity art fans check out Banksy exhibit

Banksy's exhibit, titled Barely Legal, drew a host of visitors over the weekend, including actors Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie.

A card handed out at the opening on Fridayread: "There's an elephant in the room. There's a problem we never talk about."

The statement went on to discuss the numbers of people living below the poverty line.

Other parts of the exhibit included a large stencil picture showing hunters raising their spears at empty supermarket shopping carts. Another stencil had a masked anarchist about to throw a posy of flowers.

The show also featured a Plexiglas case holding fake Paris Hilton CDs, photos of the celebutante and live cockroaches.

Banksy, as expected, was not on hand for the exhibit's launch. Though his reputation is growing, the British artist has continued to disguise his identity.

Though he began by scattering subversive stencilled images around the U.K. and surreptitiously posting his own artworks in major galleries in New York, Paris and London, Banksy made headlines around the world recently for his 500 doctored copies of Hilton's debut album left in record stores across the U.K. and the life-size figure of a Guantanamo Bay detainee he left at Disneyland in California.