Issue 9: art as consensus - hideous/wonderful
The proverb ‘beauty is in the eye of the beholder’ is meant to illustrate that our tastes are different. But it turns out, when it comes to art, at least, our ideal scene is shockingly similar.
In 1994, Russian-born, US-based artist duo Vitaly Komar and Alex Melamid began a project called ‘The People’s Choice’. Their aim was to democratically determine the American people’s ‘most wanted’ artwork.
They surveyed 1,001 Americans, asking them more than 40 multiple choice questions. Respondents shared their preferences on colour, artistic style, and size. Whether they preferred outdoor or indoor scenes, featuring wild or domestic animals, religious or non-religious themes. They were asked whether they liked realistic or imaginative paintings, the bold or whimsical, sharp angles or soft curves. Did they prefer historical or contemporary figures, and did they prefer their people nude, partially, or fully clothed? They were also asked questions about their consumer tastes, recreational activities, and knowledge of famous artists.
Komar and Melamid soon expanded the polling to 13 more countries: China, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Holland, Iceland, Italy, Kenya, Portugal, Russia, Turkey, and Ukraine. In total, they commissioned surveys with more than 10,000 demographically representative people (ranging from 400 individuals in Turkey, to 2,462 in China) conducted either by phone or in face to face interviews.
Then the artists produced paintings based on the data.
The results showed that, overwhelmingly, people around the world want the same sort of painting: a traditional style outdoor scene featuring blue skies, vegetation, and an expanse of water; also very often containing a large rock/mountain/cliff, (clothed) people, and animals.
The only exception was Holland, which opted for a portrait orientation abstract composition of green, blue, and red, with a stroke of yellow in one corner. Even Germany and Italy – which deviated slightly from the pastoral norm – still included key features such as water, vegetation, and rocks/mountains.
(Conversely, the ‘least wanted’ painting in virtually every country was an abstract, geometric composition. In Italy, it was pop-art, and in Denmark, a more traditional kitchen scene.)
This collective appreciation could reflect something scientists refer to as the ‘African savanna hypothesis’. It says that humans retain genetically based preferences for features of high quality African landscapes where our ancestors lived when their brains and bodies evolved into their modern forms.
So, we’re visually drawn to things that helped our ancestors survive: flowers and vegetation hint at the possibility of fruit; water means nourishment and the potential to attract animal food sources; trees and rocks are places of shelter and could help us evade predators.
Critics, however, said it was more likely down to the “inherent limitations” of an “overly simplistic” survey. Or the bias of Komar and Melamid’s “own desires” in their artistic interpretation of the results.
Letters sent to the pair in the years after the project was exhibited ranged between angry and amused. People proclaimed the project "enlightening and repulsive", "a poignant critique of the failure of market research and statistics", and that "art as consensus is a hideous idea, which I find makes it so wonderful". One proclaimed it was "wonderfully hilarious and horrifying”, but that the paintings were "the apotheosis of bad taste. What are we to make of this? Do we laugh? Do we cry?".