Nam June Paik was born in Korea, but passed away as an American artist in 2006. He made a significant impact on introducing video as a medium into the art world. He was also a composer and performer. After knowing these facts you can better understand his work, and see themes of Korea, music, and video in a majority of his work.
In his early life he studied music, which leads to inspire Paik with his future in art. He moved to Germany after college where he got involved with the Neo-Dada movement (working with contemporary materials, popular images, and contrast. He did this along other artist in a group known as Fluxus. This group questioned and challenged what constituted as art at the time. This is when Paik begun to experiment and the use TVs. He worked with video installations using various amounts and sizes of monitors in his work.
In the early 1960’s he moved to the United States and started working with Charlotte Moorman, a classical cellist, to combine his video art with her music. One of the earliest examples is “TV Cello” where he forms multiple monitors to take the shape of a cello. She sits and plays as images of her playing appear on the screens. Next portable video/recorders were invented and the creativeness of his work took off. becomes a more risqué in the late 60’s. One example is the “TV Bra for Living Sculpture,” where Charlotte is only wearing a bra made from TVs.
Another theme Paik was known for was his ability to make robots out of TVs, using various objects to put them together like metal, wire, and radios. My favorite is “Beuys Voice,” a robot/man in a top hat done in 1990. The next major theme is his ability to show his love for his home, and other places he has lived. He made them appear in his monitors or dedicated work to specific places. In 1988 he showed great appreciation for Korea in “The More The Better,” which is a giant tower of 1,003 monitors for the Olympic Games in Seoul.
Overall I like Paik’s work and being innovative. He was not just artistic but very smart. He realized music was the center of art movements in the 60’s and used it in his art. He was also first on the trend of video art. Being one of the first his art has a chop shop/ garage feel with wires and use of heavy metal, but this could be on purpose. In his robots this look is most apparent. Paik took advantage of changing times and had fun with media art.
In Paik’s career he experimented with combining performance, music, video, and forming objects. He wanted to make the audience question the nature of television. Although he worked with various media, he is well known as one of the first to work with video art. To quote Paik "Skin has become inadequate in interfacing with reality. Technology has become the body's new membrane of existence." This holds more true with every day that passes.
Paik's website: www.paikstudios.com
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