Komar & Melamid

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

Acknowledgments