The Zen Master of Video

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Now hailed as the father of video art, Nam June Paik remains an irreverent and rigorously experimental artist.

by Bruce Kurtz tion of Eastern mysticism and Western thirty years has helped to change the technology that is at the heart of Paik's character of contemporary music and Like a child mesmerized by the flicker­ pioneering video art. advanced visual art and to transform ing light, an eighteenth-century bronze Now fifty years old, Paik has devised television from popular entertainment Japanese Buddha sits cross-legged in musical compositions in which pianos into avant-garde art. front of a globe-shaped television set, are overturned or disemboweled, per­ Paik was born in Seoul, Korea in meditating on its own "live" and con­ formances in which members of the 1932 and was educated in Tokyo and tinuously broadcast image. The piece, audience are lathered in shampoo, Germany, where he went to study Nam June Paik's T.V. Buddha, is at· videotapes that blend Korean drum musical composition in the late 1950s. once humorous and visionary. The music, American Indian chants, and At the University of Munich and the seated figure contemplates television's Japanese television commercials, and Conservatory in Freiburg, he im­ omnipotent, invisible electronic im­ sculptures made from television receiv­ mersed himself in twentieth-century pulses, making explicit the combina- ers. His iconoclastic work over the past music, especially electronic composi-

100 Portfolio May I June 1982 tions. In 1958, he met American com­ The moment was right for Paik's premiered as part of the third Avant­ poser John Cage; the encounter, Paik experiments. When he arrived in New garde Festival in 1965. Charlotte says, was a turning point in his life. _York, he was already involved with Moorman, founder of the festival and Both Paik and Cage had noticed that Fluxus. In the city he joined the most then a cellist with the American Sym­ audiences at electronic-music concerts adventurous artists who were breaking phony Orchestra, played the first half of invariably lost interest; both sought to down the boundaries between visual Saint-Saens's The Swan on her cello, make their musical works more visually then submerged herself in an oil drum stimulating. The auditory, tactile, and filled with water. Dripping wet, she visual possibilities of video, therefore, continued the recital, playing the sec­ had a special appeal for Paik. At the ond half of the piece better---:or so Paik same time, his training as a composer says-because she is a Scorpio, a water enabled him to manipulate video's time sign. (Moorman has also performed dimension; it was ·this aspect of the this composition clad either in an eve­ medium that baffied many beginning ning gown or in a clear plastic sheet.) video artists, who had been trained in Outrageous though it was-and is­ the static arts of painting and sculpture. Paik's Variations is a serious work. As soon as used television sets be­ Sounds, particularly the sounds of came available in Germany, around American popular music in the 1960s, 1960, Paik began to experiment with bathe the listener in sonic waves, some­ them, altering their circuits to create times even making his body vibrate. images that video engineers would have There is no single "point of hearing." considered "disturbances." In -1963, Thus, Paik' s Variations is a metaphor for Paik showed thirteen of his altered tele­ auditory experience. And it is both sexy visions at the Galerie Parnass in Wup­ ("Sex has been a main theme in art and pertal, Germany, in what was the first literature," says Paik. "Why not in exhibition anywhere of television or niusic?") and funny. video art. The use of irreverent humor to em­ From the beginning, Paik under­ body complex meaning is like a Zen stood the difference between television master's challenge and is typical of and film . "Film is chemicals, .T.V. is Paik's art in all its forms. For instance, electronics," he explained. His altered Opposite: Philosophy, wit, and technology in T.V. Bra for Living Sculpture, first per­ television receivers manipulated elec­ blend in such works as T .V . Buddha, a formed in 1969, Moorman plays her tronics, not just images. "Someday," closed-circuit video installation with which cello while wearing two tiny plastic-en­ he said in a New Yorker profile by Calvin the artist was photographed in 1981. With cased television sets as a bra; each of the Tompkins in 1975, "artists will work its continuously transmitted image of an receivers shows live images of her per­ with capacitors, resistors, and semicon­ inanimate art object, the piece demonstrates formance, modulated by the changing ductors as they work today with . the seriousness of Paik 's exploration of the sounds of the cello. A play on the cliche brushes, violins, and junk." time dimensions of his medium. Above: "boob tube," T.V. Bra also calls to Paik developed his own often scien­ Playing off everyday reality against televi­ mind the intimacy and tactility of tifically unorthodox techniques of con­ sion's reality, Paik 's 1979 Fish T .V . America's nourishing font and elec­ trolling and interacting with the televi­ {urns a monitor into a bowl for real .fish. . tronic baby-sitter, the television. sion image in Tokyo in 1963-64, when Trained as a composer, Paik showed his Meanwhile, Paik was pioneering on he worked with Hideo Uchida, pres­ first video piece in 1963. PHOTOGRAPHS ERIC KROLL another front. By 1970, he and Abe had ident of Uchida Radio Research Insti­ built a videosynthesizer, an electronic tute, and the brilliant electronics engi­ · device for manipulating color televi­ neer Shuya Abe. In 1965, having sion ~ s millions of phosphor dots even moved to rew York, Paik bought the art, music, dance, and theater, manip­ without a camera or a prerecorded first portable videotape recorder avail­ ulating duration and sequence and try­ image. The resulting images are purely able in the city. Most artists' video of ing to stimulate active participation by electronic, originating within the cir­ the early 1960s was intended as an anti­ spectators. Paik, Robert Rauschen­ cuitry rather than in the artist's imagi­ dote to commercial television; often the berg, David Tudor, Allan Kaprow, nation. This harnessing of random tapes were unedited or abstract in form Yvonne Rainer, and John Cage pre­ images was an important step in Paik's and content. Paik' s work was different. sented performances at Judson Hall in contiiluing and conscious attempt to He went directly to the electronic heart Greenwich Village, a focal point for remove his ego from his art. of the medium and explored in four New York City's avant-garde in the The Paik-Abe videosynthesizer was directions: videotronic distortions of mid-1960s. not necessarily the first or only such the received signal, synaesthetic video­ It was atJudson Hall that Paik's Var­ device, but it was the first used on tapes, closed-circuit environments, and iations on a Theme by Saint-Saifns, a char­ broadcast television. In the summer of sculpture pieces. acteristic early performance piece, 1970, Boston's WGBH broadcast Video

Namjune Paik 101 Top: Charlotte Moorman, Paik's stalwart has supplanted nature. (This piece was collaborator, climbs into a vat of water as also the most influential video piece at part of a performance of Variations on a the 1977 Dokumenta in Germany.) Theme by Saint-Saens after having Recently, Paik has moved away from played half of Saint-Saens's The Swan on the performance aspects of his earlier her cello. The piece was initially staged at work. His newest interest is a system for judson Hall in 1965, shortly after Paik projecting video images with a laser had moved to New York. Center: Paik's beam, a technique pioneered by Ger­ famous T .V . Bra for Living Sculpture, man laser artist Horst Baumann, who which Moorman first performed in 1969, is persuaded a laser manufacturer to pro­ a sly metaphor for the "boob tube," vide him with $100,000 worth of equip­ America 's electronic nursemaid. Bottom: ment. Baumann taught Paik, who In a 1971 presentation ofConcerto for -characteristically-gives him full T .V . Cello, Moorman-wearing elec­ credit. As with his other video work, tronically altered sunglasses-plays an Paik is as interested in laser technol­ instrument composed of television sets, ogy's image-transforming effects as he changing the images on the screens through is in the image itself. 1 the action of her bOW. PHOTOGRAPHS' PETER MOORE So far in his career, Paik has com'­ bined popular showmanship with the Commune, a four-hour live program of most rigorous pursuit of avant-garde images from the Paik-Abe synthesizer ideas. "I have a theory about American (manipulated by Paik, director David avant-garde art," he explained in 197 4. Atwood, studio workers, and strangers "Serious avant-garde art here is always invited in off the street) accompanied by in opposition to American mass cul­ the entire musical output of the Beatles. ture. In a way, mass culture conditions The following year, the Boston Sym­ serious art . . . . Popular culture is set­ phony commissioned Paik to produce a ting the rules, so you have to define videotape to accompany a WGBH sym­ what you do against what they are phonic broadcast. He chose to illustrate doing. We want to make more crude if Beethoven's tumultuous Piano Concerto they are perfect, we want to make more No. 4 in G Major with close-ups of a boring if they are exciting ... : Amer­ small plaster bust of Beethoven being icans need not be entertained every sec­ battered by a large hand, intercut with ond because they are so rich ... ·. I come shots of a flaming toy piano that col­ from a very poor country, and I am lapsed during the crescendo. The poor. I have to entertain people every orchestra was said to be dissatisfied, but second." viewers were delighted. But Paik does more than merely en­ Paik is the only artist whose work has tertain. His grasp of irony has enabled been consistently successful on broad­ him to couch the most outrageous cast television, largely because its fast avant-garde iconoclasms in the guise of pace and ironic humor effectively par­ entertaining anecdotes. Perhaps his ody commercial television entertain­ Oriental origins gave him an intuitive ment. Not all ofPaik's video pieces can feeling for the invisible impulses of elec­ be broadcast, of course. T. V. Garden, tronics-technical equivalents of the first exhibited at the Galeria Bonino in metaphysics of Eastern philosophies. If 1972, encouraged visitors to stroll. this analysis is correct, Paik has, with among upturned color television sets great success, joined his native empa­ showing Global Groove. Nothing sold, thies with advanced world culture. The but, as Paik recalls with delight, one of global reach of television, of Marshall the sets was stolen. Later, in an ex­ McLuhan's "global village," is no­ panded T. V. Garden installation at the where embodied more intelligently 1973 retrospective at the Everson Mu­ than in the art and life of Nam June seum in Syracuse, New York, thirty Paik. 0 altered sets were planted faceup among I potted flowers so that viewers could Bruce Kurtz is associate professor of art watch Paik's videotapes (among them history at Hartwick College in Oneonta, New the Boston Symphony tape and Global York and has organized the current exhibition Groove) from a balcony above. In T.V. of Eve Sonneman 's photographs at the Hud­ Garden, as in popular culture, television son River Museum.

:02 Portfolio May I June 1982 Above: T.V. Garden, which Paik first installed in 1972, replaces flowers and foliage with television sets, a wry suggestion that popular culture has sup­ planted nature. Lift: Using a video­ synthesizer he developed with engineer Shuya Abe, Paik produced his 1971 Portrait of Charlotte Moorman. PHOTOGRAPHS LEFT : PETER MOORE

Right: In 1973, Paik combined a potpourri of cul­ tural imagery from around the world in his McLuhanesque Global Groove.

PHOTOGRAPHS: JOCK GILL

Lift: Merce by Merce by Paik, Part II, a 1978 videotape, con­ sists of electron­ ically generated images of modem dancer Merce Cunningham.

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