China’s Most Wanted Painting – DIA Center for the Arts, Chelsea.
Dia’s second artists’ project for the world wide web, begun in 1995, was created by the Russian emigrant artist team Vitaly Komar and Alex Melamid. The Most Wanted paintings, as well as the Least Wanted paintings, reflect the artists’ interpretation of a professional market research survey about aesthetic preferences and taste in painting. Intending to discover what a true “people’s art” would look like, the artists, with the support of the Nation Institute, hired Marttila & Kiley, Inc. to conduct the first poll. In 1994, they began the process which resulted in America’s Most Wanted and America’s Least Wanted paintings, which were exhibited in New York at the Alternative Museum under the title “People’s Choice.”
Under Dia’s auspices, and with the sponsorship of Chase Manhattan Bank, the artists expanded their market research to more than a dozen countries around the globe and in turn, created Most Wanted and Least Wanted paintings for each country. Digitized versions of the paintings and the survey statistics which inform them are made available to the public through Dia’s web site. In addition, visitors to Komar and Melamid’s web page were invited to take the market survey questionnaire. Between November 1995 and March 1997, 3001 visitors completed the online poll. The results have been tabulated and can be see online, along with the Web’s Most Wanted and Web’s Least Wanted images. The web’s images are exceptional from those of the individual countries. Although paintings were made, the Web’s Most Wanted and Web’s Least Wanted are images of the paintings in context, intended to be viewed only on a computer screen.