What's in Good Taste?

What is good taste? Why do we like the things that we do? How can we make an ad or design or painting appeal to everyone?

Perhaps one of the best examples of the studies of good and bad taste in terms of art are "The Most Wanted Paintings" by Komar & Melamid.

These artists conducted surveys of a thousand people each of various countries. The surveys were geared toward discovering a particular country's aesthetic preferences in terms of painting. Based on the polls, Komar and Melamid created two paintings for each country suveyed: 1. The Most Wanted Painting, and 2. The Least Wanted.

If you look at the most popular paintings as a group and the worst paintings as another group, there are vast differences from country to country. What one country considers horrible varies from what another country considers horrible; the same is true for "The Most Wanted Paintings."

United States' Most Wanted Painting


China's Most Wanted Painting


Holland's Most Wanted


To see all the paintings done by Komar & Melamid, click here.

Komar & Melamid even composed two songs using the same strategy as the paintings; "The Most Wanted Song" and "The Least Wanted Song."

The Most Wanted Paintings are not even that great. They are in fact quite odd. The American painting has a random figure of George Washington, people walking, and some Bambi-like deer frolicking. It doesn't really make sense. In fact, most people would probably say that "The Most Wanted Painting" is in bad taste.

Taste is subjective, you can't please everybody. What a designer or an artist can do is please a specific target market or person. Also, taste is subjective; people's likes and dislikes vary from person to person. It doesn't matter what you do, there will always be someone who dislikes your work.