I recently learned the story of Vitaly Komar and Alex Melamid, two Russian-born conceptual artists who, as part of their People's Choice series, captured EXACTLY what America wanted in their paintings. To create “The Most Wanted” (1994) painting in America, Komar and Melamid gathered data from professional polling companies and actually gave the people what they asked for.
Naturally, by basing decisions unquestioningly on what consumers asked for, Komar and Melamid....