Komar & Melamid, Most Wanted Painting, U.S.A.
This painting was based on a survey of 1001 adults conducted by Marttila & Kiley, Inc. between December 10 and December 21, 1993. Participants in the survey were asked what they most liked to see in a painting.
3 comments:
This picture sort of reminds me of the "face averaging" article we looked at in class. The average of one thousand ideas of a beautiful painting turns out to be this benign meadow...sort of like that plain-Jane face from the newspaper article. Everyone might have their own ideas to push the work in different directions and make this painting better in their eyes, but in order to please the entire group, those extremes "cancel one another out"...so to speak.
(I'm about to post a continuation to this response on my personal blog...)
I think that this painting comments on what art often means nowadays in this public sphere: a "pretty" painting to be hung above your couch. I think it says a lot about what people would want to pay for - and this pastoral scene is very different from the direction of working contemporary art has taken. And while this painting has the right content to be appreciated by the masses, by being so commodified, it loses experiential value. No longer does the landscape painting take your breath away. Or the use of brushstrokes in the clouds make you ponder the very nature of clouds or even of paint. Instead, it reads as a bizarre collage, no longer exciting what the ideas of the subjects usually meant. Its oddness, in my opinion, actually repels the viewer. I do not think many people would actually hang this in their homes. It is too complex, too anachronistic, too... bizarre. By creating the ideal aesthetic, the artist has removed what was ideal about it to begin with (that is, nature is valuable for its beauty and subtleties, not its commodity). By giving back to the public this perfect piece, the artist has provided a less-than-perfect experience.
In a way I think it says that what we all want doesn't really work together. When you try and blend everyone's preference together it becomes a joke. Relation to politics?
Post a Comment