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

Vitaly Komar, Joann Wypijewski, Alexander Melamid,

ISBN 10: 0374228809 / ISBN 13: 9780374228804

Published by Farrar Straus Giroux November 1997, 1997

About this Item

What is beauty? 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 betes noires of Soviet cultural commissars, the Russian emigre art team of Vitaly Komar and Alexander Melamid takes on not only the billion-dollar American art industry but also capitalism's most venerated tool: the market research poll. With the help of a professional polling firm, 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 exported to nine other countries -- including Russia, China, France, and Kenya -- representing more than one-third of the world's population. Essays by JoAnn Wypijewski and noted art critic Arthur Danto, as well as interviews with the artists, explore the crisis of modernism, the cultural meaning of polls, the significance of landscape, and the commodification of just about everything. With the help of a professional polling firm, ex-Soviet art critics Komar and Melamid discovered that what Americans really want in art, regardless of class, race, or gender, is exactly what the art world disdains--a tranquil, realistic 'blue landscape'. Komar and Melamid provide a comic and profound discussion of art in our time. Full color art throughout.

Seller Inventory # 20110214130486

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Painting by Numbers: Komar and Melamid's Scientific Guide to Art
• Publisher: Farrar Straus Giroux November 1997
• Publication Date: 1997
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0374228809
• ISBN 13: 9780374228804
• Binding: Hardcover
• Condition: Used - Very Good
• Seller catalogs:
  • Art - Artists, A-Z

About this title

Synopsis

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

Reviews

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.