Russian artist collaborators Vitaly Komar and Alex Melamid continued their Most Wanted Paintings series for inSITE2000, a series that employs a democratic process in creating “people’s art” based on the aesthetic desires of the general population in a given area or country. As in previous versions of the series, the artists used multiple-choice survey questionnaires to discern, statistically, the personal preferences in art. The surveys were conducted in San Diego and Tijuana by graduate students from San Diego State University and from the Colegio de la Frontera Norte over the course of several weeks. The artists then used the data collected to create two paintings, San Diego’s Most Wanted Painting and Tijuana’s Most Wanted Painting. The two paintings were on view first at the San Diego Museum of Art and subsequently at the Centro Cultural Tijuana.
Curators: Susan Buck-Morss, Ivo Mesquita, Osvaldo Sánchez, and Sally Yard
Venues: San Diego Museum of Art and Centro Cultural Tijuana
Tijuana survey under the supervision of:
El Colegio de la Frontera Norte
Jorge Santibañez – President, El Colegio de la Frontera Norte
Rodolfo Cruz – Director General de Vinculación y Apoyo Académico, El Colegio de la Frontera Norte
Coordinators in Tijuana
Jesús Montenegro Herrera
Mari Carmen Hernández Hernández
Francisco Barraza
Surveyors in Tijuana
Alfonso Caraveo Castro
Juan Rodríguez
Karina Rosas
Verónica Camacho Reyes
San Diego survey under the supervision of: Charles F. Hohm, Ph.D. – Professor of Sociology, San Diego State University
Coordinators in San Diego
Nikola Kalamir
Lisa Wallace
Surveyors in San Diego
Jennifer Cooper
Vivianne Currier
Patty Figueroa
Lizely Madrigal
David Miller
Megan O'Dowd
Scott Terry