Tuesday, August 16, 2011

Painting by Numbers: Komar and Melamid's Scientific Guide to Art. - book reviews


There should be a warning on the cover of Vitaly Komar and Alexander Melamid's Painting by Numbers: Komar and Melamid's Scientific Guide to Art: This is not a book. From the opening page, which offers "America's most wanted" painting (dishwasher-size, as preferred by 67 percent of the representative sample), the reader becomes a participant in a radical happening, '90s-style, complete with polls, global travel, and practical jokes. Komar and Melamid, two emigre artists who launched their American career in 1979 with a project of buying and selling souls, have now taken on the nature of art, democracy ("the people's choice"), and artistic authority. What is the universal language of the '90s: painting or numbers? Is there any universal language of beauty at all or do we now fully inhabit a postmodern multitude of taste? Who is the author or coauthor of popular fantasies?


In his essay "Can it be the 'Most Wanted Painting' even if nobody wants it?" Arthur C. Danto writes that "Komar and Melamid are postmodern artists who yearn, as in a way we all do, for the sweet innocence of premodern art." In my view, if there is any nostalgia here, it is a nostalgia for the modernist belief in the role of art in society and in the possibility of any kind of aesthetic universal language, not necessarily that of abstraction. Komar, dissenting for a moment from his coauthor, confesses his hope that people who come to see the "Most Wanted" series "will become so horrified that their tastes will gradually change." Is their project a perverse defense of aesthetics via negativa?To garner rave reviews and standing-room-only crowds, the whole enterprise -- from fast-food burger spots to the finest fine-dining restaurants -- must be choreographed and executed with professionalism every day. That's business. And that's entertainment.My beliefs came home to roost in February, when a film production company took over my house for a day and a half to create a Churchs Chicken television commercial. While it was more like Hollywood than Broadway, the filming of the commercial, for the introduction of spicy chicken tenders at some of the chain's more than 1,000 units, brought new insight into how theatrical the restaurant business can be -- and especially how pure the form is on the marketing side.Please note the cardinal rule to dishbreaking: Break the dirty dishes! You don't wanna break dishes you just labored to clean; you wanna break the dirty ones so you don't have to clean 'em.Problem: You've been breaking a lot of dishes at work. Solution: What's the problem? Broken dishes are not your problem, though they can be the solution to your problems. Be it stress, boredom, or revenge, there's no easier way to enlighten a mood than by "accidentally" dropping a wad of twenty plates. "OOPS!" Now don't you feel better? The glorious sounds of crashing dishware have long been known as a therapeutic cure for any dishwasher's ailment (even the flu). And his very same sound never fails to make any boss cringe. Always an added bonus is to commit your "drop" while the boss is present so you can enjoy the pained expression on the old sourpuss's face.Every day the curtain rises on another show, and success depends on how convincingly the actors in the production play their roles, from the dishwashers to the maitre d's.By 6 a.m. on the day of the filming, trucks and cars started lining up on the streets outside. One truck held props; another, heavy-duty lighting gear. A mobile home was parked alongside the house for the actors and production staff; a mammoth generator truck hummed in front to provide juice for the intense lighting.Although Pete doesn't make money off his publishing efforts, Dishwasher does manage to break even. He says his dream is to offset-print the entire zine. Right now he prints only the cover and mimeos the inside pages wherever he can find a copy machine. His growing reputation means more copyshop employees are willing to give him unofficial discounts. He says the latest issue required between 6,000 and 7,000 copies. Alternative bookstores distribute about half He sells the rest himself.Komar and Melamid's coauthorship is dialectical; it reflects a desire for belonging to the people, to history, to the majority, as well as an emigre estrangement - at once a mental ghetto and a vantage point. For instance, even the world's favorite color does not represent universal serenity for these artists. Their blue is "different-looking." Komar associates blue with his first encounter with the West. On board the Boeing that carried him to the United States, he visited the toilet, flushed, and got the greatest surprise of his life: dark blue, the color of freedom, the color of the artificial heaven of consumer goods. It is from this resident-alien perspective that Komar and Melamid search for the people's choice, and a universal language.

It has often been suggested that in contemporary society, polls have replaced politics and polity. Even though the pollsters and statistics professors openly acknowledge that theirs is a limited science, it has been made to function as the true representation of the people's choice and is repeatedly manipulated by politicians, businessmen, and journalists. Seemingly the most democratic tool, statistical analysis is frequently used as the most authoritarian one. It doesn't describe a demand, but constructs it. Komar and Melamid, however, take the polls at face value. This literal-mindedness, coupled with fantastic technology, is characteristic of much of American media culture. The artists reveal its absurdity. The "most wanted," calculated with the help of the polls, is what nobody wants - except those who order the poll.




Author: Svetlana Boym


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