Nam June Paik transformed 20th-century art through his work with television, film, lasers, cybernetics, and video. His work in these mediums was deeply informed by his training in music and performance, but today he is remembered as the “father of video art” for his lively collages of found and original footage and his innovative use of broadcast media, which expanded the reach of experimental art to wide audiences.
Early Life and Education
Paik was born in Seoul, South Korea, to a wealthy industrial family. With the onset of the Korean War, the family moved to Japan, where Paik attended the University of Tokyo. He graduated in 1956 with a degree in aesthetics and moved to West Germany to pursue his interest in avant-garde music. He studied music theory, history, and composition in Munich and Freiburg before moving to Cologne in 1958 to work with electronics in the studio of West German Broadcasting (WDR).
Action Music: Etude for Pianoforte, One for Violin, Sonata quasi una fantasia
That summer, after Paik encountered the music and ideas of the composer John Cage, he declared himself “a new man” and immediately began revising his working method. The result was a form he called Action Music: a mix of live and taped sound, objects, and provocative theatrics. An early example is Etude for Pianoforte (1960), in which he destroyed a piano onstage before leaping into the audience to cut off Cage’s necktie with a pair of long-bladed scissors. In One for Violin (1962), he shattered a violin by bashing it on a table, and in Sonata quasi una fantasia (1962), he did a striptease while playing Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata. With Action Music, Paik’s goal was to shock the listener into a more receptive state by violating performative and musical conventions. Many of these compositions were performed at concerts organized by George Maciunas, the self-styled impresario of the Fluxus group.
Video Sculptures: TV Buddha, TV Garden, 66-76-89
While working at WDR, Paik became interested in television, which he saw as a fertile area for artistic exploration. He made his first altered TVs in 1963 by distorting their pictures using magnets, changing their wiring, or manipulating the horizontal and vertical hold controls. He continued this work after immigrating to the United States in 1964, making numerous sculptures from televisions and, later, video monitors. Well-known examples include TV Buddha (1974), in which a statue of the god contemplates its own live image on a closed-circuit TV, and TV Garden (1974), which featured thirty video monitors of various sizes nestled within an installation of tropical plants. The Walker’s collection includes 66-76-89 (1990). This towering sculpture pairs Electronic Waltz (1966), a color TV whose picture has been distorted by a magnet, and video footage of the Mississippi River shot in 1976.
TV Bra for Living Sculpture, TV Cello
Also in the Walker’s collection are two iconic video sculptures that Paik made for his performing partner, cellist Charlotte Moorman. TV Bra for Living Sculpture (1969) comprises two small television tubes inside plexiglass cases that were held on Moorman’s chest with clear plastic straps. As she played her cello, she could alter the images on her bra by using a foot pedal or strapping a magnet to her wrist. TV Cello (1971), a stack of three TV tubes fitted with amplified strings, functioned in much the same way. Both objects were part of Paik’s attempts to “humanize technology” by making clear its intimate connection to the human body.
Film and Video: Zen for Film, Global Groove, Merce by Merce by Paik
Paik began shooting film in the mid-1950s and purchased a portable video camera in 1965. The artist was one of the first to adopt the new technology at the time. Key works in both media include Zen for Film (1964), a roll of 16 mm clear leader in which the dust and scratches were the only image, and Global Groove (1973), a trippy comment on pop culture. The latter of these was created by collaging his own footage with clips from broadcast TV and adding a soundtrack of voiceovers, interviews, and popular music. Other videos pay homage to artists who were important to him. Merce by Merce by Paik (1978), created with Charles Atlas and artist Shigeko Kubota, Paik’s wife and frequent collaborator, is a tribute to artist Marcel Duchamp and choreographer Merce Cunningham. That piece also features an audio collage that includes the voices of John Cage and Jasper Johns.
Other Moving Image Experiments
As new technologies became available, Paik was quick to explore them. In Good Morning Mr. Orwell, broadcast on January 1, 1984, he used satellite to link live, simultaneous performances in Paris and New York by artists Laurie Anderson, Joseph Beuys, Allen Ginsberg, and many others. During the 2000s, Paik teamed up with laser specialist Norman Ballard to make several large-scale installations, including Jacob’s Ladder (2000), a stepped laser projection that rose from floor to ceiling in the Guggenheim Museum’s rotunda, and Transmission (2002), which cast colorful patterns on the buildings surrounding New York’s Rockefeller Center Plaza.
Awards and Recognition
Paik’s works are in many major museum collections worldwide, including the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Stiftung Ludwig, Vienna; and Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney. He has had solo exhibitions at the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Guggenheim Museum, and the Smithsonian American Art Museum. In 1993, along with Hans Haacke, he represented Germany in the 45th Venice Biennale. In 2008, the Nam June Paik Art Center opened in Yongin, South Korea.
