Nam June Paik and media art: Asian serenity bends Western craze

Nam June Paik's status in the art world: very high up, a sure thing

Nam June Paik was born in 1932 in what was then a unified Korea, but lived in the USA from 1964 until his death in 2006. Although the artist lived most of his life (primarily) in New York and had become an American citizen, he cannot be understood solely as an American artist thinking within Asian traditions with avant-garde ideas from Western culture .

Paik evolved from a music and art historian specializing in composition into an exceptionally active and prolific visual artist, occupying a leading position video and media art "father of video art." Although other pioneers of video and media art have enjoyed extraordinary careers, Paik remains among the most renowned. Examples include the American artist Les Levine (born 1935) and the German artist Wolf Vostell (like Nam June Paik, born 1932).

In any case, Paik was among the first to discover the universally accessible media of video and television; at a time when “pictures for everyone” were just beginning their triumphant march around the world.

And he was one of the first to examine more closely the special features and potential of a world of moving images that was available to everyone for the first time, both receptively and actively. He also questioned these through artistic interpretation.

And Nam June Paik still occupies one of the leading places in the world ranking of art today because he never stopped; he continually absorbed new impulses from music and visual arts, as well as technical innovations, in order to analyze, catalyze, and translate them into art.

While Vostell is listed somewhere between 220 and 320 and Levine is "floating" somewhere between 2200 and 3200 (which neither of them would object to, because they have set completely different priorities in their lives), Nam June Paik is currently (2016) ranked 40th in the world's best art list (which is sorted by public presence and sales success).

Paik's ranking hovered around 50th in the world art rankings from 2006 to 2008, rising to 25th in 2009 and 2010. Since then, his position has been slowly declining, reaching 39th or 40th in 2016. This fluctuation has been somewhat inexplicable, with occasional peaks. A slight increase in exhibitions featuring Paik's work, either exclusively or as part of a group show, can be observed from 2007 or 2008 onwards. His sudden rise in the rankings may have been a consequence of an auction record set by Christie's

But overall, it's a back-and-forth at a very high level; Paiks has secured a place among the 50 best artists in the world, which he is unlikely to relinquish anytime soon, given his upcoming exhibitions.

Nam June Paik's path to art: From "early music" to "new music", from humanities to electronics

Nam June Paik was born on July 20, 1932, in Korea , then a unified country and a Japanese colony. Paik was the youngest of five children in a wealthy family; his father owned a large textile factory.

Paik was destined to become a classical pianist and received appropriate training during his youth. World War II and the subsequent division of Korea in 1948, instigated by the rival occupying powers, the Soviet Union and the USA, intervened. In 1950, the division of the country escalated into the Korean War, as both Korean regimes considered themselves the only legitimate successors to the Korean Empire, which had been annexed by Japan in 1910.

North Korea, with Chinese support, sought to force the reunification of Korea under its own leadership. Western-oriented South Korea resisted, supported by United Nations troops led by the United States. Paik's family was wealthy enough to turn their backs on the war as early as 1950. They first went to Hong Kong and then to Japan.

Nam June Paik studied Western aesthetics, musicology, and art history in Tokyo from 1952, graduating in 1956 with a thesis on the composer Arnold Schoenberg. Inspired by this, Paik then went to Germany to study music history at the University of Munich. He also studied composition with Wolfgang Fortner at the Freiburg University of Music.

During his studies, he met the composers Karlheinz Stockhausen and John Cage, and the conceptual artists Joseph Beuys and Wolf Vostell. From 1958 to 1963, he worked with Stockhausen at the WDR Studio for Electronic Music in Cologne. Stockhausen and Cage inspired him to work in the field of "electronic art" .

Nam June Paik joined the Neo-Dada (Fluxus) art movement, which was then forming around John Cage and incorporated everyday sounds and noises into its music. In 1962, together with his mentors, he participated in the “FLUXUS: International Festival of Newest Music” at the Wiesbaden Museum and the “Little Summer Festival” at the Parnass Gallery in Wuppertal.

Paik's first major solo performance was in 1963 at his exhibition “Exposition of Music – Electronic Television” at the Galerie Parnass in Wuppertal. He distributed television sets across the entire exhibition space, altering or distorting their images through the application of magnets.

In 1964, Paik went to New York, where he met the classical cellist Charlotte Moorman, a graduate of the famous Juilliard School (Pina Bausch, Miles Davis, David Garrett, Nigel Kennedy, Sophie von Kessel, Val Kilmer, James Levine, Barry Manilow, Thelonious Monk, Itzhak Perlman, Leontyne Price, Christopher Reeve, Kevin Spacey, Robin Williams, Pinchas Zuckerman, for example) and just starting a traditional concert career.

The rather extroverted Moorman, like the restless and exceedingly curious Nam June Paik, was ill-suited for a life in the depths of a concert pit and found the multimedia performance art scene of 1960s New York fascinating; in 1963 she founded the New York Avant-Garde Festival (in Central Park and at the Staten Island Ferry, which ran with few interruptions until 1980). She soon worked closely with Paik and toured extensively with him. They combined his video art with music and performance.

In New York, Paik found exactly the working environment, the stage of technological development, and the audience to develop his ideas about art and to be successful with them.

Everyone has seen this before: Media art by Nam June Paik

This is not a single artwork by Nam June Paik. Rather, it is an event so directly linked to the beginning of his career and the artistic initiators of Paik's artistic concept that it must be mentioned first:

The legendary “24-hour happening” of 1965 at the Parnass Gallery in Wuppertal.

The happening began on June 5, 1965 at midnight, ended at midnight, and surpassed in intensity and media impact everything that had previously taken place in the Parnass Gallery.

A great deal had happened at the Galerie Parnass: in 1950 Jean-Paul Sartre's "Huit Clos" (Eight Closes) ; in 1951 the first Le Corbusier exhibition in Germany; in 1952 Jean Cocteau's "La voix humaine" (The Human Voice) , an architecture exhibition by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, and the first German solo exhibition of Alexander Calder, abstract art of Tachisme, the École de Paris, and Art Informel; in 1956 the exhibition "Poème Objet" with works by 50 artists from Germany and France; in 1962 the "Kleine Sommerfest – Après John Cage" (Little Summer Festival – After John Cage), with the first public appearance in Germany by the American Fluxus founder George Maciunas, which was followed by further Fluxus events at the gallery; in 1963 the aforementioned Paik exhibition "Exposition of Music" and an exhibition of Wolf Vostell's décollages, which included a six-hour happening The “9-No-Décollages” exhibition opened in 1964, followed by the “Front Garden Exhibition” of the Capitalist Realism group (including Gerhard Richter and Sigmar Polke); the “24-Hour Happening” formed the crowning conclusion in 1965.

Joseph Beuys , Bazon Brock, Charlotte Moorman, Nam June Paik, Eckart Rahn, Tomas Schmit and Wolf Vostell performed their actions in the various rooms of the Villa Parnass:

performance "Consequences of the Emergency Laws," Wolf Vostell first lay on the floor marking raw meat and offal with pins, then, wearing a gas mask, sat in a glass box filled with atomized flour, which was being stirred up by a vacuum cleaner. Next to the glass box was a wooden cage containing students from the Wuppertal School of Applied Arts, laden with meat and chewing on pieces of meat.

Joseph Beuys performed “and in us … beneath us … underwater .” He squatted or lay on an orange crate covered with a white oilcloth and occasionally stretched out (desperately or longingly, with minimal movements) towards objects, often beyond his reach.

The objects – tape recorder, record player, loudspeaker, zinc box with grease, alarm clock, watches , his son's children's boxing gloves – should surely mean as much to the viewer as Beuys' movements – head stretched over a wedge of grease, feet hovering just above the ground, communal spade (a spade with two handles made by him) in front of his chest – but should remain uninterpreted here except for the admiration that Beuys was the only one to sustain his action for a full 24 hours.

Bazon Brock exhibited everyday objects collected in the household of gallery owner Jährling as “traces of life” and created the literary text “According to experimental results, one gram of cobra venom kills 83 dogs, 715 rats, 330 rabbits or 134 humans” by standing on his head in front of two slowly rotating discs, the windows of which revealed a letter every 15 minutes.

Eckart Rahn created “noise music” with a double bass and a monotonously played recorder in front of a microphone and loudspeaker. While doing so, he read the Kinsey Report. For younger readers: The Kinsey Report consists of two books by the American zoologist and sex researcher Alfred Charles Kinsey, which “Sexual Behavior in the Human Male” (published in German in 1955 as “Das sexuelle Verhaltens des Mannes”) in 1948 and “Sexual Behavior in the Human Female” (published in German in 1954 as “Das sexuelle Verhaltens des Frau”) in 1953.

Anyone familiar with the results of Kinsey's completely serious and biologically conducted research – the original English titles literally translate as "Sexual Behavior of the Human Male" and "Sexual Behavior of the Human Female" – is no longer surprised that the book about women was published in Germany a year after its release in Germany, while the book about men was published seven years after its release in the USA.

And he understands why "strong men's movements," from political parties to log-throwing clubs, tend toward an almost hysterical aversion to homosexuality: simple fear, because reality shatters their entire worldview. Nearly half of the men have engaged in heterosexual or homosexual activity, or at least reacted to people of both sexes; about 60% of pre-pubescent male children can look back on voluntary experiences with same-sex activities; roughly half the population (men and women) is bisexual to some degree.

Actually, this isn't surprising at all, but rather something we experience every day (beyond the narrow sense of sexuality): People with a homosexual side aren't 100% male or 100% female; or to put it another way: Not exclusively testosterone-driven "males" aren't always in the mood for aggression, but also possess tender, caring (feminine) traits. Not exclusively estrogen-driven "females" aren't always in the mood for harmony and love, but can also assert themselves, with cool reasoning or even with a good dose of (masculine) aggression.

The remaining 50% are, of course, not exclusively macho or cuddly types; however, the more macho category contains a disproportionately high number of managers of large corporations and military commanders (leaving aside the suspicion that most of them are also psychopaths, see www.zeit.de/ ). In the more cuddly category, on the other hand, there are certainly more tirelessly active social workers and divorcees who have been stripped bare.

While the macho type is more likely, but not exclusively, a man, and the cuddly mouse more likely, but not exclusively, a woman… Discrimination against homosexuality is simply wrong because it is more beneficial for our society if it consists of as many people as possible who are well distributed and “carry both sides of humanity within them” .

Back to the 24-hour happening : Thomas Schmit performed “without an audience”, with 24 buckets in a circle, from which he poured water until it disappeared, and interrupted as soon as an audience entered the room.

Nam June Paik and Charlotte Moorman gave a concert featuring pieces by Ludwig van Beethoven, John Cage, Morton Feldman, and La Monte Young. Paik seemed to fall asleep at the piano keys; Moorman played cello in a transparent cellophane dress, which she occasionally soaked, and sometimes slapped a mirror and her cello against it—this semi-nude performance caused the greatest stir of all the actions.

Nam June Paik and Charlotte Moorman at the 24-hour happening:

Although Eva and Joseph Beuys helped the Jährlings clean up the villa the next day, Wolf Vostell's already slightly musty meat was buried in the garden, and a friend, an author, contributed highly toxic Jacutin foglets for fumigating the rooms, the Jährlings dissolved the Galerie Parnass, which had existed since 1949, in September 1965 to travel through Africa in a VW bus. Presumably in search of a safer life…

Nam June Paik, however, had something planned for the next morning: a whole “Robot Opera .” At Moltkestraße 67 in Wuppertal-Elberfeld, in front of the Parnass Gallery, K 456 made its first public appearance in Europe. K 456 was quite talented and quite complete, 185 cm tall, and could speak (reciting speeches by John F. Kennedy), walk, shake its head, move its arms and hands independently, and digest food. Why it excreted white beans during this digestion is probably as difficult to fathom as the robot's naming after Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 18 in B-flat major, K. 456.

Mozart's 18th Piano Concerto

The robot, or rather the robotine, is a life-size figure made of wood, wire, and electronics. Its features are not particularly detailed and are somewhat yellow, but unmistakably female. The robot can be remotely controlled and, according to its creators Nam June Paik and television technician Shuya Abe (with whom Paik frequently collaborated), was intended to be the first non-human performance artist.

He was therefore to be used in all future street actions; perhaps that is why Paik had insisted that K 456 be given breasts that could also be moved individually (to the envy of female admirers?).

Here you can Robot K 456 on the street in Berlin in 1965, as a “Tribute to John Cage” , amazing passers-by, just as Nam June Paik intended:

and here she demonstrates cheerful chest gyrations:

In 1982, Paik let K 456 wander the streets of New York, with the unsurprising result that the robot was run over by a car at the corner of Madison Avenue and 75th Street. This, however, had been prearranged between Paik and the driver, and the astonished passersby subsequently witnessed K 456 being transported to the museum in a rescue operation, where, after repairs, it comfortably settled back onto its pedestal.

Paik had already understood back then (when Hasselhoff's KITT, the self-driving car, was just conquering the screen with "Knight Rider") that robots, unlike humans, are not up to the complexity of road traffic, cannot assess the dangers, nor can they react flexibly enough.

Unlike most modern car manufacturers, Paik didn't believe that this should ever change. Ironically, the technology-loving electronic artist took a clear stance against the then-emerging notion of humans as flawed compared to the perfect machine.

The fact that an absolute expert in the finest electronic command chains believed that the first failure in a complex process chain would be caused not by a human, but by a robot, should probably deter us for quite some time from entrusting our grocery shopping to the computer in the refrigerator. At least until we're safe from sudden network outages when we want to have the 5994 extra raspberry yogurts we ordered picked up…

Back to the “24-hour happening” : The happening was immortalized in the publication “24 Hours ,” a photographic documentation by gallery owner Rolf Jährling and photo artist Ute Klophaus (who were promoted by the participants to co-authors and participants in the event). “24 Hours” was published in 1965 by Hansen & Hansen in Itzehoe-Vosskate.

In addition to the photographs, the book object contains notes and texts by the artists: Joseph Beuys “Energieplan” , Charlotte Moorman’s “cello” , Rolf Jährling’s “Mittelwort” and Nam June Paik’s “Pensée” , in which he talks about cybernetics and drugs and predicts the victory of conceptual art over popular mass art.

Bazon Brocks was more interested in the audience's attention and notes laconically: "5 people at Vostell's, everyone at Beuys's, nobody at mine."
Only Wenzel, the son of Joseph Beuys, "so visibly surrendered himself as the only one to his narrated story ," but only around noon until 1 p.m., after which he presumably had to go back to his father on the orange crate to whisper words of encouragement to him.

At the back of the book, several square pages had cutouts to hold a small plastic bag filled with flour, courtesy of Wolf Vostell. After removing the bag, one could read: “Spend 24 hours with flour!” These days, presumably with mealworms, if one can still get hold of one of the specimens, which now cost around €700.

Following this happening, Paik made headlines performances

"Opera Sextronique" of 1967, during which the topless Charlotte Moorman was arrested (the scandal surrounding her subsequent conviction would lead to a new, more liberal law with greater freedom in artistic performances).

"TV Bra for Living Sculpture" followed , which Moorman performed with two small television sets attached to her breasts, or in the following video:

“TV Bed” survived from 1972 to 1991 for Charlotte Moorman, whom Paik deeply admired.

1975: “Video Fish” , several aquariums side by side in which fish swim around in front of an equal number of monitors showing videos of swimming fish.

Today, the concept has already been surpassed by “Videos for your Cat” :

(Videos for house cats, topic: aquarium).

Moorman was involved again in 1976, in “TV Cello” she plays the cello built from televisions, which conjures up different cello-playing musicians on the screen with every bow stroke:

During his collaboration with Moorman, Paik's goal was to elevate music to the same level of development as art and literature. He also wanted to make sex a topic that no longer caused offense in public. In one of his Fluxus works, the performer is instructed to climb into the vagina of a live sperm whale (whose reaction, unfortunately, is not recorded).

In 1986, the “Family of Robot” completed, featuring family members from three generations: grandmother and grandfather, mother and father, aunt and uncle, and children. The generations were distinguished by the materials used, thus telling a family story and depicting different stages of media development during the 20th century. Paik presented technology here as a product of human ingenuity, which is also a possible reason why humanity is losing touch with reality.

He humanizes technology in order to resist it:

“You have to know technology very well in order to be able to survive it” (quote Paik).

This philosophical idea is also illustrated in the media infrastructure “Fish Flies on Sky” by Nam-June Paik at the Museum Kunstpalast (Düsseldorf) & Perpetuum Mobile I (U-Matic-Video): single-channel video, 4:04 minutes (1987) in a network of tube televisions.

In 1988, for the Summer Olympics in Seoul, Paik presented “The More The Better” , a remarkable media tower consisting of 1,003 monitors.

In 1989, Paik installed the “TV Buddha” on and in front of the screen. You can learn more about the sense and nonsense of the Buddhas on the screen on the YouTube channel of the Museum Kunstpalast Düsseldorf:

In 1990, the “Pre-Bell-Man” as a commissioned work for the reopening of the German Postal Museum. Paik produced the collage of the modern knight from various parts of radio and TV devices, almost exclusively from objects in the collections of the German Postal Museum.

Paik acquired only the knight's horse in a Venetian junk shop; the Pre-Bell-Man stands in front of the newly opened Museum of Communication in Frankfurt am Main.

From 1990 to 1997, following the K 456 and the Family of Robot, a third wave of robots emerged, in which he recreated some of his heroes,
such as “Gertrude Stein” (1990), “Beuys Voice” (1990), and Watchdog II (1997), only authentic with a surveillance camera at the end of its tail and loudspeaker ears.

In honor of John Cage, who died in 1992, the “Piano Piece” , videos above a piano, some with pictures of Paik, some with pictures of Cage, some with pictures of the world – and a surveillance camera that records the piano player and shows it on six of the screens.

Also in 1992, the “Brandenburg Gate” (now part of the collection of the Museum Ludwig in Cologne) was created, a multi-monitor installation consisting of 200 larger and smaller television sets in the shape of the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin.

In 1995, Paik materialized the film “Electronic Superhighway” in a grotesque, mammoth installation full of images that were as meaningless as they were boring, framed by a disturbing neon jumble that assaulted the eyes and senses of taste. Cultural critique at its finest, and subtle enough that the very series-junkie shallow thinkers and blinky-shiny fans addressed wouldn't even realize they were the target (isn't that Trump grinning out of the screen in the middle?).

Here's a little more "Paik to look at" from the (early) years :

• Participation TV (1963)
• TV Crown (1965)
• Magnet TV (1965)
• Moon Is the Oldest TV (1965)
• TV Chair (1968)
• 9/23/69, Experiment with David Atwood (1969)
• TV Cello (1971)
• Global Groove (1973)
• TV Garden (1974)
• Candle TV (1975)
• Video Fish (1975)
• Video Buddha (1976)
• Real Fish/Live Fish (1982/1999)
• Good Morning, Mr. Orwell (1984)
• Swiss Clock (1988)

Paik's creative exploration of new media did not end there; at the beginning of the twenty-first century, he laser technology into his work. In his most recent installation, he projected laser beams onto cotton canvases, flowing water, and smoke-filled spatial structures; in this "post-video project," he further developed the articulation of the moving image.

The “post-video project” can be seen at the end of this one-hour “exhibition talk” by Nam June Paik with curator John Hanhardt on the occasion of the exhibition “The Worlds of Nam June Paik” at the Guggenheim Museum , where this installation was also presented.

At the beginning of the new millennium, Paik offers us a glimpse into how cinema and video can merge with electronic and digital media in new forms of expression and visual techniques. He suggests that in the 21st century we will witness the end of video and television as we know them, and that a transformation of our visual culture is imminent.

Looking ahead to the future once again: Paik only experienced the very beginnings of the interconnected world, in which humanity exchanges digital film documents across the globe. Due to his advanced age, he was no longer able to comment on the emerging possibility of a “final revolution of enlightenment ,” in which moving images (knowledge, information) could be passed on instantly from anyone to anyone else, through his art.