Akron's Most Wanted

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Artists and museums often struggle to determine what their audiences would like to see. The artistic duo Vitaly Komar and Alexander Melamid attempted a boldly direct solution to this problem by hiring a market research firm to conduct polls on artistic taste. The artists created two groups of paintings based on the results, one featuring the colors, compositions, and subject matter that respondents most desired, and the other including the least wanted elements. The Akron Art Museum later commissioned Akron’s Most Wanted in 1998 as part of an exhibition of the artists’ work. The painting’s contents were requested by people attending a public town meeting held in Akron with the artists. The result is visually exciting, but perhaps not as straightforwardly likable as one might expect, suggesting that artistic creativity may be more complicated than reaching a consensus about taste.

Keywords

Akron
Collage
Oil painting
Ohio
Mystical
Tire
Goodyear
CD
Industry
Bunnies