What is art, and who defines it? "The People's Choice," a project
by Russian-born American artists Komar & Melamid, addresses these
two controversy-packed questions in a perversely literal yet profoundly
revealing analysis.
As
immigrants to this country, Vitaly Komar (b. 1943) and Alexander
Melamid (b. 1945) were intrigued by the idea of the consumer poll
as an outgrowth of American democracy. In 1994, they commissioned
a consumer market-research firm to conduct "People's Choice,"
the first poll on artistic taste in the United States. Through
the polls, the artists wanted to "initiate a conversation with
the American people [ . . . ] like the President of the United
States." Using the data collected in the survey, they painted
a pair of canvases of classic proportions ("the size of a dishwasher,"
which was the preferred choice according to the poll) and called
them America's Most Wanted and America's Most Unwanted,
including in each painting what the respondents said they wanted
or did not want in a painting.
Over
the past four years, Komar & Melamid have extended the polls to
the World Wide Web and to thirteen other countries: China, Denmark,
Finland, France, Germany, Iceland, Italy, Kenya, Holland, Portugal,
Russia, Turkey, and Ukraine. Based on the results, the artists
created a Most Wanted and a Most Unwanted painting
for each country and the Web. The exhibition here presents the
entire "People's Choice" project. Komar & Melamid began their
careers by twisting conventional ideas and mocking the authorities
in their native Russia during the early 1970s, initially taking
on state-approved Socialist Realism as a target and establishing
themselves as prominent artist-dissidents in the process. They
later immigrated to Israel and, in 1978, moved to the United States
and are now U.S. citizens. With their series of Most Wanted
paintings, they have now appointed themselves the instruments
of the establishment, taking as their patron not a monarch, a
church leader, or a wealthy merchant, as most artists used to
do (and some still do), but the people of an entire country. However,
like a court jester slyly poking fun at his master, they present
us with an image of ourselves that may not necessarily please
us.
All
the paintings consist of elements that received the highest percentage
of votes, with the size of each element (and the colors used)
in proportion to that percentage. Thus, America's Most Wanted
features a small historical figure (6 percent of the composition),
a wild animal in the near distance (3 percent), a significant
amount of green forest and other trees (34 percent), and, over
40 percent of its surface, blue water and sky. While undoubtedly
many people like images of historical figures and equally many
like those of wild animals, few would want a picture that shows
George Washington in the company of a hippopotamus. By loading
a single canvas with a literal interpretation of unrelated "most
wanted" items, the artists have produced an obviously absurd work
of art.
"The
People's Choice" has thus become a critical commentary on the
notion that art should be judged democratically. By applying democratic
standards to the choices involved in making these paintings-which
resulted in each individual painting failing to deliver the kind
of satisfaction and stimulation sought in art-Komar & Melamid
have clearly demonstrated why art cannot be produced or evaluated
according to such standards. This failure also serves as a reminder
that "The People's Choice" is a comprehensive project of social
and conceptual nature that far exceeds the narrow parameters of
the polls as well as the narrow frames of the canvases. In all
their works, Komar & Melamid have never considered art as an isolated
phenomenon but as the product of its cultural and material context.
"The
People's Choice" has been organized and circulated by Independent
Curators International, New York (ICI), and produced in cooperation
with the Komar & Melamid studio. ICI is a non-profit traveling
exhibition service that specializes in innovative exhibitions
of contemporary art. The exhibition, tour, and accompanying free
brochure have been made possible, in part, by a grant from the
Foundation-To-Life, Inc. and ICI's International Associates.
home
|