Painting by Numbers: Komar and Melamid's Scientific Guide to Art. This item is unavailable.Painting by Numbers: Komar and Melamid's Scientific Guide to Art

Discusses the findings of the research by Soviet art critics on what Americans want in art

In December 1993, the Russian emigre art collaborators Komar and Melamid began a statistical market research poll to determine America's "most wanted" and "most unwanted" paintings. Since then, the whimsical project has spread around the world. Polls in the United States, Ukraine, France, Iceland, Turkey, Denmark, Finland, Kenya, and China revealed that people wanted portraits of their families and always "blue landscapes." After conducting research, the pair paint made-to-order works that meet the wanted (landscape) and unwanted (abstract) criteria; they follow up with town meetings as virtual performance pieces. This intriguing and serious volume documents issues raised by the conflict between high art and popular taste. The best reading is an interview with the artists, whose gift of gab bounces around Marxism, Stalinism, God's inscrutability, Wagner, "Sears style," and the crisis of ideas in art. The project has been debated in the Nation and recorded in art magazines, and this summary volume is highly recommended for all contemporary collections.?Mary Hamel-Schwulst, Towson State Univ., Md.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.