Painting by Numbers: Komar and Melamid's Scientific Guide to Art

by Joann Wypijewski (Editor)

What is art? Who defines it? And why is high art so remote from most people? With the same puckish humor and critical genius that made them the bêtes noires of Soviet cultural commissars, the Russian émigré art team of Vitaly Komar and Alexander Melamid takes on not only the billion-dollar American art industry but also capitalism's most venerated the market research poll. With the help of The Nation Institute and a professional polling team, they discovered that what Americans want in art, regardless of class, race, or gender, is exactly what the art world disdains—a tranquil, realistic, blue landscape.

Painting by Numbers includes the original questionnaire and reproductions of the "most wanted" and "most unwanted" paintings the artists made based on American survey results and on polls they commissioned in ten other countries—including Russia, China, France, and Kenya—representing almost one-third of the world's population. Essays by JoAnn Wypijewski and noted art critic Arthur Danto, as well as an interview with the artists, explore the crisis of modernism, the cultural meaning of polls, the significance of landscape, and the commodificaion of just about everything.

Genres: Art, Nonfiction, Philosophy, Science

205 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1997

Reviews

[else fine · Rating 4 out of 5]

Komar and Melamid traveled the world, holding town-hall style meetings to determine what people most (and least) wanted to see in a painting. There are charts and graphs to support their findings, and of course, finished paintings representing each nation's ideal. It's interesting to see how similar and yet how different the most and least wanted pictures are all over the world - bucolic landscapes with national heroes hanging out with big animals top the list everywhere - and the quasi-scientific text is a hilarious counterpoint.

[Kate · Rating 3 out of 5]

From average they created ideal.

"Blue color is everlastingly appointed by the Deity to be a source of delight." —JR

[Troy · Rating 4 out of 5]

A hilarious and straight faced take on art by committee. Komar and Melamid polled various people in various countries and found out what people like to see in a painting. It's a pretty amazing take on social norms and how they relate to art. Oddly, the Dutch are the only country that prefers abstract art; everyone else wants hokey landscapes.

[Nat]

I loved this when I was an undergrad. And while parts of it convey intense mid-90s nostalgia (the fall of the Berlin wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union still feel recent; there is much discussion in Danto's essay of Newt Gingrich's Contract with America), most of it still feels completely up to date. Maybe this is even more a work of the present than the 1990s--an artwork based on surveys or "big data" would not really raise any deep philosophical questions if it were done today.