Nam june paik book
Paik altered the sets to distort their reception of broadcast transmissions and scattered them about the room, on their sides and upside down. He also created interactive video works that transformed the viewers' relationship to the medium. With these first steps began an astonishing effusion of ideas and invention that, for almost 40 years, have played a profound role in the introduction and acceptance of the electronic moving image into the realm of art.
In Paik moved to New York and continued his explorations of television and video, and, by the late s, was at the forefront of a new generation of artists creating an aesthetic discourse out of television and the moving image. Throughout the s and s, he also worked as a teacher and an activist, supporting other artists and working to realize the potential of the emerging medium.
Along with his remarkable sequence of videotapes and projects for television-featuring collaborations with friends Laurie Anderson, Joseph Beuys, David Bowie, Cage, and Merce Cunningham-he created a series of installations that fundamentally changed video and redefined artistic practice. The Worlds of Nam June Paik, on view in the second-floor galleries of the museum, highlights artworks from the span of Paik's career.
Architect Frank Gehry's design of the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, with both classical galleries and innovative curvilinear exhibition spaces, offers a spectacular environment for the visitor to discover the achievements and adventures of Paik's prolific career. There is not a traditional linear and chronological sequence to the design of the exhibition, but rather a juxtaposition of artworks from different points in time to suggest the connections and continuities of Paik's creative output.
This curatorial approach responds to Gehry's post-Modern architecture and Paik's transformative integration of the electronic moving image into art making. Both the artist and the architect have redefined art and its public presentation at the onset of a new millennium. Paik's innovative thinking about media and technology informed his aesthetic early on in his work.
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A selection of restored audio pieces from the s and s demonstrates his use of recorded sound as an integral part of his Fluxus performances. C'est moi," in a pamphlet, a reference to his Asian identity that, as the curators June Yap and Lee Soo-yon have noted, appropriates a xenophobic phrase coined by Kaiser Wilhelm II as Paik referenced his Asian identity.
Curator John Hanhardt observed that certain works recall Paik's lived experience of transnational immigration from South Korea to Japan, Germany, and on the U. Nam June Paik then began participating in the Neo-Dada art movement, known as Fluxus , which was inspired by the composer John Cage and his use of everyday sounds and noises in his music.
He made his big debut in at an exhibition known as Exposition of Music-Electronic Television [ 13 ] at the Galerie Parnass in Wuppertal in which he scattered televisions everywhere and used magnets to alter or distort their images. In a piano performance in Cologne , he played Chopin , threw himself on the piano and rushed into the audience, attacking Cage and pianist David Tudor by cutting their clothes with scissors and dumping shampoo on their heads.
Cage suggested Paik look into Zen Buddhism. Though Paik was already well familiar with Buddhism from his childhood in Korea and Japan, Cage's interest in Zen philosophy compelled Paik to re-examine his own intellectual and cultural foundation. During and the engineers Hideo Uchida and Shuya Abe showed Paik how to interfere with the flow of electrons in color TV sets, work that led to the Abe-Paik video synthesizer, a key element in his future TV work.
Paik used this VTR to record television broadcasts, frequently manipulating the qualities of the broadcast, and the magnetic tape in process. In Sony introduced the first truly portable VTR, which featured a portable power supply and handheld camera, the Sony Portapak. With this, Paik could both move and record things, for it was the first portable video and audio recorder.
In a notorious incident, Moorman was arrested for going topless while performing in Paik's Opera Sextronique. One of his Fluxus concept works "Playable Pieces" instructs the performer to "Creep into the Vagina of a living Whale. In , Paik and Moorman made TV Cello , a cello formed out of three television sets stacked up on top of each other and some cello strings.
In Nam June Paik used the term "super highway" in application to telecommunications, which gave rise to the opinion that he may have been the author of the phrase " Information Superhighway ". Assuming we connect New York with Los Angeles by means of an electronic telecommunication network that operates in strong transmission ranges, as well as with continental satellites, wave guides, bundled coaxial cable, and later also via laser beam fiber optics: the expenditure would be about the same as for a Moon landing , except that the benefits in term of by-products would be greater.
Also in the s, Paik imagined a global community of viewers for what he called a Video Common Market which would disseminate videos freely. Possibly Paik's most famous work, TV Buddha is a video installation depicting a Buddha statue viewing its own live image on a closed circuit TV. Paik created numerous versions of this work using different statues, the first version is from Another piece, Positive Egg , displays a white egg on a black background.
In a series of video monitors, increasing in size, the image on the screen becomes larger and larger, until the egg itself becomes an abstract, unrecognizable shape. This work was commissioned under the public building arts inclusion act of The installation's media is neon lights incorporated around video screens. A giant tower, the work is made of monitors—a number that references October 3 as the day of Korea was founded by Dangun , according to legend.
For the German pavilion at the Venice Biennale, Paik created an array of robot sculptures of historic figures, such as Catherine the Great and the legendary founder of Korea, Dangun , so as to emphasize the connections between Europe and Asia. Paik's piece Electronic Superhighway: Continental U. These were constructed using pieces of wire and metal, but later Paik used parts from radio and television sets.
Despite his stroke, in , he created a millennium satellite broadcast entitled Tiger is Alive and in designed the installation of monitors and video projections Global Groove [ 37 ] for the Deutsche Guggenheim in Berlin.
Knowing that Korea's audience was not familiar with international art world conversations of video art, Fluxus, and performance art, Paik selected artworks that appealed to popular subjects of Korean culture and history. A final retrospective of his work was held in at the Guggenheim Museum in New York City, with the commissioned site-specific installation Modulation in Sync [ 40 ] integrating the unique space of the museum into the exhibition itself.
Hanhardt was the curator for three landmark exhibitions devoted to the artist, the ones at the Whitney Museum, the Guggenheim Museum, and the Smithsonian American Art Museum. From April 24, , to September 7, , Paik's works T. Although Paik's pioneering experimentalism and foresight of the important role media would continue to play in society has been examined across many exhibitions, for a exhibition, the Tate Modern turned its focus upon Paik as a collaborator.
In late , the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea , will present an exhibition that focuses on Paik as cultural organizer who made an immense impact upon South Korea's art scene; it aims to bring into greater focus Paik's relationship with national identity. Given its largely antiquated technology, Paik's oeuvre poses a unique conservation challenge.
Out of a group that included the Museum of Modern Art , the J. Paul Getty Museum , the Solomon R. The archive includes Paik's early writings on art history, history and technology; correspondence with other artists and collaborators like Charlotte Moorman, John Cage, George Maciunas and Wolf Vostell ; and a complete collection of videotapes used in his work, as well as production notes, television work, sketches, notebooks, models and plans for videos.
It also covers early-model televisions and video projectors, radios, record players, cameras and musical instruments, toys, games, folk sculptures and the desk where he painted in his SoHo studio. Curator John Hanhardt , an old friend of Paik, said of the archive: "It came in great disorder, which made it all the more complicated.
It is not like his space was perfectly organized. I think the archive is like a huge memory machine.
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A wunderkammer, a wonder cabinet of his life. Michael Mansfield, associate curator of film and media arts at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, supervised the complex installation of several hundred CRT TV sets, the wiring to connect them all, and the software and servers to drive them. He developed an app on his phone to operate every electronic artwork on display.
As a pioneer of video art his influence was from a student he met at CalArts named Sharon Grace he described her as "pure genius" from the moment they met. The artwork and ideas of Nam June Paik were a major influence on late 20th-century art and continue to inspire a new generation of artists. In , Gagosian Gallery acquired the right to represent Paik's artistic estate.
Paik moved to New York City in Paik was a lifelong Buddhist who never smoked nor drank alcoholic beverages, and never drove a car. In , Paik had a stroke, which paralyzed his left side. He used a wheelchair the last decade of his life, though he was able to walk with assistance. He died on January 29, , in Miami , Florida, due to complications from a stroke.
Paik was survived by his wife, his brother, Ken Paik, and a nephew, Ken Paik Hakuta , an inventor and television personality best known for creating the Wacky WallWalker toy, and who managed Paik's studios in New York City. In one of his last interviews, Paik voiced his belief that to be buried in a cemetery would be futile, and expressed a desire for his ashes to be scattered around the world, and for some of his ashes to be buried in Korea.
Contents move to sidebar hide. Article Talk. Read Edit View history. Tools Tools. Download as PDF Printable version. In other projects. Wikimedia Commons Wikiquote Wikidata item. South Korean video artist — Miami , Florida, United States. Shigeko Kubota. Early life and education [ edit ]. Career [ edit ].
Nam june paik clinton: The Kyonggi Cultural Foundation launched an international ideas competition for the design of a museum devoted to the work of the artist Nam June Paik, the media artist who broke new ground for the contemporary art.
Works [ edit ]. Exhibitions [ edit ]. Collections [ edit ]. Honours and awards [ edit ]. Archive [ edit ]. Influence [ edit ]. Art market [ edit ]. Personal life [ edit ].
Nam june paik artwork
Health deterioration and death [ edit ]. Legacy [ edit ]. Because of these challenging collaborations, our agency would like to design a museum in cooperation with Nam June Paik, a museum in which room and art challenge one another. Paik often makes several versions of his works.
Nam june paik museum competition
In some cases, he creates a new interpretation of his own work years after the first version. The Buddha watches his own projection, in a constant loop of filming and projecting, involving visitors. In that same period Paik created his Robots: experimental installations, often built up from monitors. These objects may be placed freestanding almost anywhere in the museum, thanks to the flexible exhibition space.
Over the 's and 's, the artist added neon and laser to his range of techniques. These works of art can also easily be installed in several places in the exhibition rooms. These may be viewed at leisure in the privacy of cubicles. The volume of the building follows the contours of the natural hills, transforming the natural landscape into a museum space.
In several steps, the building digs itself in and settles into the slope of the hill. The spacious forecourt leads into the museum and can be seen from the sculpture terrace on the first floor of the building as part of the exhibition space. The curved shape of the building, resulting from the location, leads to a fan-shaped floor map.
The organizing grid resembles the pattern of magnet lines. The lines of the seams in the pavement lead the visitors into the museum. A path is marked in a different pattern, leading visitors across the forecourt towards the entrance. This path continues inside the museum, as the same pavement is used on the stairs. The building is made up of four curved zones.
One zone is a service area with parking facilities for visitors and office space for employees. The second and fourth zone is circulation space for staff, fire escape and installation. The third zone is reserved for expositions and the storage of art.