Blog / 2009 / Survey Says...

In the 1990s, artists Vitaly Komar and Alexander Melamid created People’s Choice, a series of paintings based on surveys about what people like and do not like in art. The polls were conducted in China, Denmark, Finland, France, Holland, Iceland, Kenya, Russia, Turkey, Ukraine, and the United States, and they asked questions like:

What’s your favorite color? Do you prefer modern or traditional styles? A natural setting or a portrait? An outdoor or an indoor scene? What season? Do you like paintings related to religion? Should paintings teach a lesson? Should they be realistic or different-looking? Should they have a bold and stark or a playful and whimsical design? Sharp angles or soft curves? Brushstrokes visible or smooth-looking? Colors blended or separate? Should paintings be serious or festive? Busy or simple? Large or small?

The polls also asked participants to agree or disagree with the following statement: “I only like art that makes me happy.” Nearly two-thirds of the world population surveyed agreed, a quarter disagreed, and the remainder were “not sure.”

The paintings of the People’s Choice series bear a striking resemblance to one another across cultural boundaries.

For the most part, people worldwide dislike abstract art with very textured paint.

And they prefer landscapes and the color blue.

The series of paintings revealed how useless the mass’ averaged opinion is when applied to individual cases. Though the works followed everyone’s taste scrupulously, they inspire few people individually.

The paintings that Komar and Melamid made were more than simply images based on crowd-sourced directives. They were a bland and flat version of the poll results, lacking the least bit of artistic spark. It seems to me that Komar and Melamid drained the paintings of any spirit in order to more fully make their point: the People’s Choice series is a critique of democracy and, more specifically, of the politicians who allow themselves to be controlled by surveys. Like Komar and Melamid’s paintings, those politicians lose what’s most likeable and worthwhile about them when they try to appeal to everyone equally.

But the paintings themselves weren’t the real product of the series, not at least as far as I can tell. Long before the images were created, People’s Choice made a space for its participants to talk and think about art in a way that most people do not usually have the occasion to do. It allowed people to define themselves against the opinions of others during the town hall forums and focus groups organized by Komar and Melamid. It created a conversation about art that wasn’t limited by any particular work but only by what the participants could imagine.

During one such conversation, Melamid said: “I feel like a sultan in a harem; I am sure that there will be people who will not be satisfied fully.”* Indeed, the genius of People’s Choice is in how it reveals the aspects of the maker’s relationship with the audience that many modern and contemporary artists are not willing to acknowledge.

Melamid again, during an interview:

“We’ll always serve some people, or someone, maybe unconsciously. So let’s do it consciously. Let’s serve the people. Stop playing the game that we’re freewheeling artists. We’re not! We’re slaves of the society. We have to...choose the masters. Unlike in Russia, we have this choice. Because Russian serfs didn’t have any choice; the masters were given to them. But here we live in a free society; we can choose our masters. Maybe that’s what freedom is—this is a new definition of freedom.”*

Art has always been in the service of someone, whether that was a private patron or a government bent on using it as propaganda. After all, even the Abstract Expressionists, who were, by definition, disengaged from current events, were co-opted by the US government. While the Soviets were busy churning out endless examples of social realism, the American government was condemning artists whose work contained an activist element and parading Jackson Pollock and company around the world as shiny models of individual thought and creativity.

It’s no coincidence that Pollock, the most famous of the Abstract Expressionists, was not an immigrant but an American of many generations and originally from the heartland to boot. Nor is it a happy accident that Abstract Expressionism became the defining moment of New York and the United States taking over as the center of art. Our national political machine actively promoted the movement.

It’s silly that any artists believe that they can be completely free of society—no person can ever be. We’re always engaged with our fellow humans, either in harmony or in rebellion. There’s always a back and forth. Besides, if artists were severed from the rest of society, what value could their work possibly have? Art is about communication and artists can’t very well communicate in or with a vacuum.

I suppose the reason why I find Komar and Melamid’s project so fascinating is that it’s precisely the opposite of what I do in my commission work. Instead of millions, I ask just one person what they want in a portrait. And I take the subject’s preferences into careful consideration but, in the end, the work is mine. I don’t subsume my creativity to the client’s directives as Komar and Melamid did by removing the individual spark from their paintings. I make a work that’s my own but that includes what the client wants.

Commission work is a collaboration that feeds both participants and that keeps an artist in their proper place: in a relationship with the audience.