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The art of democracyLuis Camnitzer

To cite this Article Camnitzer, Luis(1994) 'The art of democracy', Third Text, 8: 27, 109 111To link to this Article: DOI: 10.1080/09528829408576495URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09528829408576495

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109

The Art of D em ocracyLuis Camnitzer

When Vitaly Komar and Alex Melamid first left theirnative Soviet Union they were classed as 'dissident'artists. Once they settled in the US it was they w hoclassed themselves as dissidents. What in their teamwork had started as a satire of socialist realismbecame on e of capitalist consumerism . Within thisvein, in their latest exhibition in New York'sAlternative Museum, they have now embarked ona much more ambitious enterprise. The ambitionis defined not so much by its artistic scope as byits social implications. The work is the result of amajor poll about US taste and culminates with twopieces: the painting most liked and the paintingliked the least.Neither the task nor the concern (and bydefinition not even th e paintings themselves) areoriginal. A precedent for the idea on a moremo dest scale had already been set thirty years agoby British artists Gerald Laing and Peter Phillips.They had prepared a small suitcase with samplesof shapes, colours and textures, accompanied byrelatively simple questionn aires, w ith the intent ofidentifying 'the' work of art of the moment. Laingand Phillips addressed peop le connected with th eart market. The result, called Hybrid, was theprodu ct of interviews with 137 peop le and landedon the cover of Arts Magazine (May issue of 1966).It was a not-too-successful assemblage, but thesculpture rep resente d the taste of the lites of thetime with some degree of accuracy. Unlike Komarand Melamid's piece, it hadn 't been a n experimentexactly guided by rigour. Forty-nine of the peopleasked picked (from a n already restricted grou p ofsamples) aluminium as their favourite material,forty-six decided for rubber and twenty-ninesuggested the use of fur. However, rather thanexpressing the variation of choices, the artistsdecided to represent only the majority withaluminium and to ignore the others. In fact theycreated an d satisfied a new and e ven smaller lite.Komar and M elamid were more democratic in their

approach and made a special effort to find arepresentative cross-section of the population ofthe US as a whole.A preoccupation with the precise definition ofpopular taste or, rather, the 'taste of the people,'has been a fundamental aim as much in commerceas in politics. In this sense every ideology hascond ucted some kind of market-analysis. It is theintuition or knowledg e of that analysis which hasdeterm ined the aesthetics of advertising campaignsselling both p roducts and govern men ts. It also hasdetermined the placement of government sponsorsand censorships, the latter usually justified by ahypothetical protection of the 'public'.Komar and Melamid's tongue-in-cheek premiseis ideological rather than commercial: if, underdemocracy, everybody has the right to decide whoshould be preside nt, it obviously follows that thosesame people should h ave the right to decide whichelements should enter the production of a workof art.Up to this poin t the idea of the artists is neitherparticularly impo rtant nor is it correct. What startsto make it interesting, ho weve r, is the decision toconfront the problem with what, at first, seemstotal candour. The originality of the project liesmainly in the scale and seriousness of the poll usedto develop the paintings. In contact with themagazine The N ation and its Institute for SocialAnalysis, the artists gathered the fund s necessaryto cond uct the po ll: $80,000 less a 50% d iscount,given the non-profit nature of the project. One-thousand-and-one persons were interviewed,represen ting all geographical and socio-economicstrata of the US, mak ing it a study comparable toany pub lic opinion poll institutionally co nduc ted.

The 'ideal' piece resulting from the enquiry doesnot offer much more depth than a good joke:Washington and a deer appear in an autumnallandscape und er a blue sky. There is, however, n oquestion that a national plebiscite would elect this

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110painting over the one executed according to'dislike' answers (a small abstract painting withragged shapes). But other conclusions brought tolight by the poll do transcend artistic illiteracy andfashion. The answe rs to the questionnaire informus t hat blue is the favourite co lour (44%) followedby green (12%). Red (11%), while not a favouritein any segment of the population, grows inpopularity in direct proportion to sophistication.This is a point w ith potential conseque nces in thecommunication industry and can lead to strangespeculations. If this trend would have held truein the former Soviet Union, what might havehap pen ed if eighty years ago the old com munistleaders had chosen a blue flag?

The results of the poll fluctuated between theobvious and the unex pected. 75% of thosequestioned believed that art does not ne ed to hav ea message and that its primary m ission is to please.19% believe that art should challenge the v iewe r'sway of seeing and thinking an d shou ld be at theservice of important causes. Surprisingly, 79%would agree with their children's decision tobecome artists, while only 26% would like themto marry one. While there are few opponents tothe marriage issue, 65% indicated indifference. Inregard to whom they would like to have dinnerwith, the order of priorities shows 29% with awriter, 25% with a movie or TV actor, 24% witha sports person and finally 14% with an artist.

Pollsters explained to the participants that anaverage of $420 of every citizen's tax money goesfor defence while $38 go for e ducation . W ith thisknow ledge, 66% of the people questioned declaredtheir willingness to pay $25 a year to be investedin the ar ts. How ever o n a personal level, 75% onlywo uld invest $500 or less to acquire a wo rk of artand 57%, having the choice between art and itsequivalent value in money, would pick the m oney.In spite of that preference, 62% claim to pick artworks because they like them and only 16%confess to choice on the basis of potential m onetarygain.In the case of small size work th e preference for69% of responses is a 19" television set as oppose dto a magazine or a pocket book. If money wo uldn 'tbe an issue, the artist would be paid by 14% topaint a family portrait, mountain scenes or wildanimals. Only 3% would be contented with a'freely' created piece of art. While a majorityaccepts that ar t does not have to berepresentational, 60% considers that the more itresembles a photograph the better.The notion that the public must have the rightto decide which art is exhibited in public spaces

is more popular among those earning below$30,000 a yea r. It is the mo re affluent sectors w hobelieve that the public should not have anyinfluence on tho se decisions. Am ong th e total ofthe participants, some 60% believes that thereshould be control by the public.Komar and Melamid limit themselves to thepresentation of data and stay away from anydiscussion of the issue. This is understandablesince that is how the project was formulated. On epart consists in a report com piling all the a nswers,assembled by M arttila & Kiley, a Boston pollingfirm which set up the questions and made tableswith the answers.* The other component of theproject is the exhibition: carefully painte d grap hson canvas, sculptures represen ting pie-charts and as a dessert the two resulting p aintings, thepositive and the negative one. Komar andMelamid's sense of satire is sharpened by theirwa shing their hands of any conclusions. Implicitlythey say that " th is is a self-portrait of US society,we are not responsible and we only followorders . "

Considering that the 'Degenerate Art' exhibitionwhich Hitler sponsored in Munich in 1937 wasvisited by two million people who presumablywere in agreem ent with the premises of the show ,the type of democracy proposed by Komar andMalamid becomes problematic. While the w ashingof their hands is acceptable in terms of the artisticgame they propo se, it becomes a formalistic devicewh ich, in terms of the deeper ramifications of theirgame, sho ws that they are cheating. The conceptof 'democracy' used to support their game is, ifnot flawed, at least misapplied. It is a form ofdemocracy based on taste and therefore ondemag ogy. It could or should have add ressedthe m ore complex issues that lead a majority of thepopulation to apply reduced and reductivethinking to art ma tters. Because of the ways boththe questionnaire and the show w ere conceived,a process of impoverishment and simplificationoccurred in direct contradiction with art's manyfunctions. Both the questionnaire and theexhibition ap peare d to be the result of a presu me ddemocratic process which ende d the m oment theproject took plac e. Even if the pro cess we re trulydemocratic, this first end is an incompletereference. The works of art which defined theconcepts generating the questions of the poll arein themselves better and richer than the two

* An abridged version of the report was published by TheNation,March 14, 1994.

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paintings resulting from the answers. Therefore,if artistic democracy as understood or suggestedby the artists were to take place, the result isproven to be one of deterioration of the artproduct.On e is tempted to reach the easy conclusion thattherefore art cannot be governed by democraticrules and n eeds a n enlightened lite, but this alsois false. The error made in all of this is projectinga political definition of democracy over art, insteadof democratising the access to art.What Komar and Melamid did was somewhatparallel to the 'Degenerate Art' exhibition. Hitler'ssho w w as intende d to prove that certain forms ofart were wrong. Instead, the exhibit only showedthat people (Hitler included) did not understandthe art being made at that time. It was to Hitler'sconvenience to have people not unders tand whilebeing und er the impression that they und erstoodvery well. Komar and M elamid, on the other hand ,are interested in people understanding art andbeing aware of the fact that they do no t un ders tandwell. Unwittingly, it seems, Komar and Melamidallowed themselves to be trapped by some of thefrivolity of today's art and they got stranded

halfway on the road to their mission. Theirproposition is interesting, but it was ruined by adetachment which precluded addressing issuesfrom a more partisan point of view.Komar and Melamid limited themselves togather the symptoms which define consumerism,ignoring any possible energy usable to solveproblems. Forced by their ow n premises, they gaveu p o n the possibility of using their ow n resources.If we were to judge the exhibition beyond theunden iable playful pleasure of any typical museu mvisit, it becomes ap pare nt that th e exhibit is reallyabou t infantilisation mo re than abou t democracy.The artists, however, neglected to clarify thedifference. (The project is also about the confusionin the artistic scene, according to an interview w ithMelamid in The Na tion.)

If the exhibition clarified any thing , it was th e sizeof the distance that exists between what an liteconsiders to be art and what the general public iswilling to accept as such. The only viableconclusio n after seeing all of this is that b oth litean d public are not o nly far away from any m utualunderstanding, but also wrong in their ownunderstanding of art.

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