In 1994, Komar & Melamid hired Marttila & Kiley, Inc. to conduct a survey of 1001 adults across the U.S., in order to research the general public’s aesthetic preferences and taste in painting. The Most Wanted Painting reflects the artists’ response to the survey results. See their website for specific survey results and least wanted paintings.
In a way it was a traditional idea, because a faith in numbers is fundamental to people, starting with Plato’s idea of a world which is based on numbers. In ancient Greece, when sculptors wanted to create an ideal human body they measured the most beautiful men and women and then made an average measurement, and that’s how they described the ideal of beauty and how the most beautiful sculpture was created. In a way, this is the same thing; in principle, it’s nothing new. It’s interesting: we believe in numbers, and numbers never lie. Numbers are innocent. It’s absolutely true data. It doesn’t say anything about personalities, but it says something more about ideals, and about how this world functions. That’s really the truth, as much as we can get to the truth. Truth is a number. - Alex Melamid