September 24, 2001 'The People's Choice Exhibit' is everything you want--and don't want--in art By John Newman What is art? It seems hard to believe today, but there was a time in this world when nobody asked that question. Like a lot of things, the well-defined boundaries of art became diffuse and ambiguous in the age of relativity. Denmark's Most Wanted The definition of art may be a standing joke, but most people know it when they see it--or at least think they do. Fair enough. But what would this de facto art look like? That's the question Vitaly Komar and Alexander Melamid set out to answer in their exhibit "The People's Choice." Komar and Melamid began their artistic careers in their native Russia back in the 1970s. In those days, art was state-approved Socialist Realism and not much else. It didn't take Komar and Melamid long to run afoul of the artistic establishment and garner a reputation as artist-dissidents. They immigrated, first to Israel, then to the United States, and while the change of political climate may have expanded the accepted definition of art, it wasn't exactly liberation either. It may not have been state-sponsored, but even in a relatively open society like the United States there was an accepted standard. Komar and Melamid went to work trying to define it. In 1994 they commissioned a market research firm to conduct a poll on artistic tastes in the United States. Using the data collected in the survey they painted canvases representing what the respondents to the poll most wanted in their art, and what they didn't want. The paintings are titled, appropriately enough, America's Most Wanted (no relation to the TV show of the same name) and America's Most Unwanted. Naturally, they wondered what the ideal art of other countries would look like as well, so they expanded their poll on the World Wide Web to 13 additional countries: China, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Iceland, Italy, Kenya, Holland, Portugal, Russia, Turkey, and Ukraine. Based on the results, they painted a Most Wanted and a Most Unwanted canvas for each country. What makes a painting pleasing to the Chinese? What kind of canvas repels the Finns? What triggers an aesthetic epiphany in the French or makes a Kenyan's skin crawl? Komar and Melamid's answers are represented by the 30 paintings that make up the exhibit "The People's Choice." But the exhibit doesn't represent simply a survey of the aesthetic likes and dislikes of the citizens of a particular country; it is also a critical commentary on the proposition of judging works of art by democratic values. Komar and Melanid's exhibit illustrates the effects in a number of fascinating ways. In the United States in particular, where notoriety can generate large sums of money for an artist, economic pressures don't necessarily work to make art conservative and conformist. Works regarded as outrageous can be as marketable, and sometimes more marketable, than those regarded as mainstream--just ask all those misogynistic gangsta rap tycoons, shock performers, and practitioners of what Ann Powers of the Village Voice terms "Transgressor Art." Ultimately, Komar and Melamid's exhibition poses the question of whether the artist has any responsibility to the tastes of the public at all, and does it in a subtle and humorous way. The "People's Choice" exhibit is jointly sponsored by the Mary Porter Sesnon Art Gallery and the Santa Cruz Museum of Art and History. It will be displayed at the Sesnon Art Gallery from Tuesday, September 25, to November 18. Gallery hours are Tuesday-Sunday, noon-5 p.m. A reception will be held at the gallery on October 8 from 7 to 8 p.m. The artists will give a lecture, "Collaboration in Art," in the Porter Dining Hall, on October 8 at 8 p.m. All events are free and open to the public. For more information, call the Santa Cruz Museum of Art and History, (831) 429-1964.