Exhibition Specs

In 1994, artists Komar & Melamid commissioned a public-research polling firm to conduct the first "People's Choice" poll in the United States-100 questions on subjects ranging from consumer tastes and recreational activities to knowledge of famous artists and preferences for or against sharp angles, curves, kinds of brushstrokes, and particular colors, sizes, content, and styles in painting. As Russian émigrés, the artists were intrigued by the idea of the consumer-research poll as an outgrowth of American democracy which led them seek answers to what a genuine people's art would look like. Using the data collected in this survey, Komar & Melamid painted a pair of canvases, America's Most Wanted and America's Most Unwanted, including in each painting what the respondents said they wanted or did not want in art.

Since 1994, The People's Choice has gone outside the U.S. and has evolved into a global analysis of what people, defined by their nationality, seek in art.

This exhibition brings together for the first time Komar & Melamid's Most Wanted and Most Unwanted paintings from fourteen countries around the world-America, China, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Holland, Iceland, Italy, Kenya, Portugal, Russia, Turkey, Ukraine-which together make up almost one-third of the world's population. The paintings are a chilling vision of what can happen when art is judged by applying democratic values.

The exhibition also presents the Web's Most Wanted and Most Unwanted, and a reading room for statistical charts and other data from the polls conducted in each of the countries, along with relevant books and supportive material.

The exhibition is accompanied by an illustrated, four-color brochure with a description of the project. Komar & Melamid's investigation is also documented in the book Painting by Numbers (published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux in 1997, and in paperback by the University of California Press in 1998).