People’s Choice
In the 1990s conceptual artists Vitaly Komar
(1943-) and Alexander Melamid (1945-) began
a series of works called “People’s Choice”
looking at common/lowest denominator
culture or as they termed it “democracy and
elitism by statistics”. They wondered what
the arts would look like if they are created to
please the greatest number of people. What
kind of culture is produced by a society that
lives and governs itself by opinion polls? Based
on the results of nationwide surveys by polling
companies in a dozen countries they created
an aggregate of the most and least wanted
paintings and songs (the latter in collaboration
with composer Dave Soldier).
The Most Wanted Artwork (except in Holland)
is mostly-blue landscape with water, people,
and animals. The Most Unwanted Artwork
was an abstract design of jagged shapes in gold,
orange, and yellow. The art created for each
country can be seen at
awp.diaart.org/km/index.php
The Most Wanted Song includes instruments
like the guitar, bass, piano and drums, and lyrics
about love sung in a Celine-Dion-like fashion.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=McIfIx29tSg
The Most Unwanted Song includes bagpipes,
cowboy music, an opera singer, rapping and a
children’s choir! Komar and Melamid stated
that “fewer than 200 individuals of the world’s
total population will enjoy this” at 22 minutes
long they might be right!
KOMAR AND MELAMID’S
Most Unwanted Song
Embed video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-gPuH1yeZ08
IGNIS
11