Nam June Paik's status in the art world: very far ahead, a solid bench
Nam June Paik was born in 1932 in the then united Korea, but lived in the United States from 1964 until his death in 2006. Although the artist lived in New York for the majority of his life (mainly) and had accepted American citizenship, he can not only be understood as an American artist; Paik deliberately combined thinking in Asian traditions with avant-garde ideas of the western culture .
Paik developed from the studied music and art scientist with a focus on composition to the extremely active and productive visual artist, who occupies one of the leading ranks in the field of video and media art . Paik is generally considered the "father of video art". Although there are other pioneers of video and media art who can look back on extraordinary artist careers, Paik is still one of the best known. An example of this are the American artist Les Levine (born 1935) and the German artist Wolf Vostell (like Nam June Paik born 1932).
In any case, Paik was one of the first to discover the generally accessible media video and television for themselves; At a time at which the "pictures for everyone" just started to start their triumphal march around the world.
And he was one of the first to examine the peculiarities and potential of a world of moving images that was receptive for all people for the first time. He also questioned this through artistic processing.
And Nam June Paik still occupies one of the leading places in the world rankings of art because he never stopped; He continuously picked up new impulses from music and visual arts and also technical innovations to analyze them, catalyze and implement them.
While Vostell is listed somewhere between 220 and 320 and Levine "bobbing around" somewhere between 2200 and 3200 (whom both certainly have no objection to anything because they have set completely different focus in their lives), Nam June Paik (2016) is in place 40 in the world's best list of art (which is sorted according to presence in public and sales success).
Paik was 50th place in the art world rankings in 2006 to 2008 plus/minus, rose to 25th place in 2009, in 2010 and has slowly moved down since then, in 2016 he reached 39, 40. A little back and forth with not exactly explanable intermediate highs. A slight increase in exhibitions in which Paik's work should be viewed exclusively or within a group exhibition can be observed from 2007, 2008; The sudden rise in the leaderboard could possibly be the echo of an auction record that the auction house of Christie’s in 2007 set up with a work of Paik.
But overall a very high level, Paiks has secured a place within the 50 best artists in the world, which he will certainly not clear in the face of the current exhibition presences.
Nam June Paik's path to art: from "old music" to "new music", from humanities to electronics
Nam June Paik was born on July 20, 1932 in Korea , at that time still united country and Japanese colony. Paik was the youngest of five children of a wealthy family, his father belonged to a large textile factory.
Paik should become a classic pianist and received appropriate lessons during his youth. The Second World War and the Soviet Union and USA's following division at the instigation of the competing occupation powers came in between. In 1950, the country's division escalated in the Korean War because both Korean regimes saw himself as the only rightful successor to the Korea Empire, annexed by Japan in 1910.
With the support of China, North Korea wanted to force Korea's reunification under his own leadership. The western South Korea, supported by the United Nations troops under the leadership of the United States. Paik's family was wealthy enough to turn his back on the war strikes in 1950. They went first to Hong Kong and then to Japan.
Nam June Paik studied Western aesthetics, musicology and art sciences in Tokyo from 1952 and graduated in 1956 with a work about the composer Arnold Schönberg. After that (excited) Paik went to Germany to study music history at the University of Munich. He also learned composition with Wolfgang Fortner at the Freiburg University of Music.
During his studies, he met the composers Karlheinz Stockhausen and John Cage and concept artists Joseph Beuys and Wolf Vostell, from 1958 to 1963 he worked with Stockhausen in the WDR studio for electronic music in Cologne. Stockhausen and Cage inspired him to work in the area of "Electronic Art" .
Nam June Paik joined the art movement of the Neo-Dada (fluxus), which was just forming around John Cage and covering everyday sounds and noises in her music. In 1962 he took part in the "Fluxus: International Festival Festival" in the Museum Wiesbaden and the "Little Summer Festival" in the Parnass Wuppertal gallery in the network of his mentors.
Paik had his first big solo appearance in 1963 in his exhibition "Exposition of Musik - Electronic Television" in the Parnass gallery in Wuppertal. He distributed televisions across the entire exhibition area, the pictures of which he changed or falsified through the action of magnets.
In 1964 Paik went to New York, where he met the classic cellist Charlotte Moorman, 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, Leonyne Price, Christopher Reeve, Kevin Spacey, Robin Williams, Pinchas Zuckerman, for example) and just at the start of a traditional concert career.
The rather extroverted Mooran was just as little made as the restless and extremely curious Nam June Paik for a life in the depths of a concert ditch and found the multimedia performance future scene of the New York of the 1960s fascinating; In 1963 she founded the New York Avant Garde Festival (in Central Park and on Staten Island Ferry, took place with a few interruptions until 1980). She soon worked closely with Paik and toured a lot with him. They combined his video art with music and performance.
In New York, Paik found exactly the work environment, the development stage of technology and the audience to develop his ideas of art and to be successful with them.
Everyone has seen it before: Media art by Nam June Paik
It is not a single work of art by Nam June Paik. Rather, it is an event that is directly associated with the start of his career and the artistic initiators of the Paikschen Kunstidee that it has to be preceded here:
The legendary "24-hour happening" from 1965 in the Parnass gallery in Wuppertal.
The happening began on June 5, 1965 at midnight, ended at midnight and exceeded everything that had occurred in the Parnasse gallery so far.
A lot had happened in the Parnass gallery: Jean-Paul Sartres "Huit Clos" , 1951 in 1951 the first Le Corbusier exhibition in Germany, 1952 Jean Cocteau "La Voix Humaine" , an architecture exhibition Ludwig Mies van der Rohes and the first German individual exhibition by Alexander Calder, abstract art of Tachism and the Informel, 1956 the exhibition "Poème Object" with works by 50 artists from Germany and France, 1962 the "Small Summer Festival-Après John Cage", with the first public appearance of the American fluxus founder George Maciunas in Germany, which followed further fluxus campaigns in the gallery, 1963 the Paik exhibition Exposure of Music mentioned Vostells Décollages, which was opened with the six-hour happening "9-new-décollages", the "front garden exhibition" of the group of capitalist realism (including Gerhard Richter and Sigmar Polke) in 1964; The "24-hour happening" formed the crowning glory in 1965.
Joseph Beuys , Bazon Brock, Charlotte Moorman, Nam June Paik, Eckart Rahn, Tomas Schmit and Wolf Vostell led their actions in the various rooms of Villa Parneass:
Wolf Vostells was only on the floor in the "consequences of the emergency laws" and marked raw meat and offal with pins, and then sit in a gas mask in a glass mask with a atomized flour, which was swallowed by a vacuum cleaner. Next to the glass box was a wooden cage with meat -contained students from the Wuppertal Werkkunstschule, who chewed on meat pieces.
Joseph Beuys performed "and in us ... among us ... land offices" . He crouched or lay on an apple linen with a white wake cloth and occasionally stretched out (desperate or longing, with minimal movements) according to objects, often outside of its reach.
The objects-tapes, turntables, speakers, loudspeakers, zinc box with fat, alarm clock, stop watches , children's box gloves of his son-should certainly say the viewer as much as Beuys' movements-stretched head over a fat wedge, feet that hover just above the floor, shared spade (made by it with two stems), but should remain uninterpreted here The admiration for Beuys to hold his action as the only full 24 hours.
Bazon Brock "traces of life" in the household of gallery owner and in the 24 hours to the literary text "According to experimental results, a gram of cobragift kills 83 dogs, 715 rats, 330 rabbits or 134 people" by stood in front of two slowly rotating slices, whose windows revealed a letter every 15 minutes.
Eckart Rahn made "noise music" , with a double bass, monotonous recorder in front of the microphone and speaker. He read the Kinsey report. For the younger readers: The Kinsey reports consists of two books by the American zoologen and sex researcher Alfred Charles Kinsey, who appeared in 1948 the "Sexual Behavior in the Human Male" (1955 in German with the title "The sexual behavior of the man") and 1953 the "Sexual Behavi in the Human Female" (1954 in German with Title "The sexual behavior of the woman" published) unveiled.
Anyone who knows the results of Kinseys completely seriously and biologically carried out-the original English titles literally translated "sexual behavior of the human male" and "sexual behavior of human female" -is no longer surprised that the book about women appeared with us one year after appearance and the men's book only 7 years after appearing in the USA.
And it becomes clear to him why "strong men's movements" tend to almost hysterical aversion to homosexuality from the political party to the tree trunk long throwing association: simple fear because reality destroys its whole world view. Almost half of the men had acted heterosexual, but also gay, or at least reacted to people of both sexes, about 60 % of pre -Pubertal male children can look back on voluntary experiences with same -sex activities; About half of the population (men and women) is bisexual to a certain extent.
Actually nothing surprising, but something that we experience exactly every day (beyond sex life in the narrower sense): people with a homosexual side are not 100 % man or 100 % woman; In other words, not exclusively testosterone -determined “males” do not want aggression all day, but have tender, caring (female) features. Not exclusively estrogen -determined “females” do not want to do harmony and love all day, but can also prevail, with a cool argument or sometimes with a good (male) portion of aggression.
The remaining 50 % are of course not machos or cuddly mouse; In the Mehr-Macho corner, however, there are an above-average number of managers of large corporations and military commanders (the suspicion that most of them are also psychopaths, sometimes external, see www.zeit.de/ ). In the multi-cuddly mouse corner, on the other hand, there are certainly more tirelessly socially active performing and excessive divorce victims.
The macho is more, but not just as a man and the cuddly mouse rather, but not only as a woman ... Discrimination against homosexuality is simply not right because it is more beneficial for our society if it consists of as many people as possible, which is well distributed "both sides of people" .
Back to the 24-hour happening : Thomas Schmit acted "without audience", with 24 buckets in a circle, from which he killed water until it had disappeared, and interruption as soon as the audience entered the room.
Nam June Paik and Charlotte Mooran gave a concert with pieces by Ludwig van Beethoven, John Cage, Morton Feldman and La Monte Young. Paik seemed to fall asleep on the piano buttons; Mooran played Cello in the transparent cellopian dress, which she occasionally soaked, occasionally tracted a Mirrors and her cello-this half-naked concert created the greatest sensation of all actions.
Nam June Paik and Charlotte Mooran at 24-hour happening:
Although Eva and Joseph Beuys helped the next day when cleaning up the villa, Wolf Vostells was already buried slightly muffling meat in the garden and a friend of your friends contributed the highly toxic Jacutin fogettes against vermin to scouring out of the rooms, the year-long, which has existed since 1949, dissolved in September 1965 to take a VW bus To travel Africa. Probably looking for a more harmless life ...
Nam June Paik, on the other hand, had something the next morning, a whole "Robot Opera" : at Moltkestraße 67 in Wuppertal-Elberfeld, in front of the Parnass Gallery, K 456 had his first public appearance in Europe. K 456 was fairly talented and quite complete, 185 cm tall, he could speak (talking from John F. Kennedy), run, shake his head, move and digest the arms and hands independently; Why he left white beans during this digestion is probably as difficult to fathom as the naming of the robot to Mozart's 18th piano concert in B major, simulation directory 456.
Mozart's 18th piano concert
The robot or the robotine is a man -high figure made of wood, wire and electronics. This did not have very detailed shaped and a little yellow, but unmistakably female characteristics. The robot can be controlled remotely and, according to his builder Nam June Paik and television technician Shuya Abe (with whom paik worked more often), should become the first non-human action artist.
It should therefore be used in all future road campaigns; Perhaps Paik had insisted that K 456 got breasts that (to the envy of the female admirers?) could also be moved individually.
Here you can Robot K 456 in Berlin on the street, as he amazed "Tribute to John Cage"
And here she shows happy chest circles:
In 1982 Paik K 456 took a walk on the streets of New York, with the not surprising result that the robot on the corner of Madison Avenue/75. Road was run over by a car. However, this was agreed between Paik and the driver, the amazed passers -by subsequently experienced how K 456 was promoted to the museum in a rescue trip, where she made herself comfortable on her podium after repair.
Paik had already understood at the time (when "Knight Rider" Hasselhoff's putty the self -driving car just conquered the canvas) that in contrast to people, robots were not up to the complexity of road traffic, neither assess the dangers nor react flexibly enough.
In contrast to most car manufacturers today, Paik did not believe that this should ever change. The technology-loving Electronic Art artist people stood in a clear opposite position on the idea of the faulty person compared to the perfect machine.
Image source: Immanuel Giel, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons
The fact that an absolute connoisseur of the finest electronic command bangs did not trust humans, but the robot in a complicated process chain, should probably prevent us from leaving our purchase to the computer in the fridge for quite a while. At least until we are safe from sudden network failures if we want to have the 5994 too much ordered raspberry yoghurts picked up again ...
Back to the "24-hour happening" : The happening was immortalized in the publication "24 Hours" , a photographic documentary by gallery owner Rolf Fahrling and photo artist Ute Klophaus (who were promoted to co-authors and action participants). "24 hours" was published in 1965 by Hansen & Hansen Itzehoe-Vosskate.
In addition to the photographs, the book object contains records and texts of the actors: Joseph Beuy's "Energieplan" , Charlotte Moorman's "Cello" , Rolf Yearlings "Mittelwort" and Nam June Paik's "Pensée" , in which he leaves through cybernetics and drugs and predicts the victory of conceptual art over popular mass art.
Bazon Brocks was more interested in the attention of the audience and wrote down laconically: "At Vostell 5 people, at Beuys all, none with me."
Only Wenzel, the son of Joseph Beuys, "came up with the only thing that was visible as the only of his told history" , but only at lunchtime until 1 p.m., after which he probably had to go back to dad on the apple's box to overcome him.
At the back of the book, several pages were punched up square to record a plastic bag filled with flour by Wolf Vostell, after the removal of which one could read: "Care yourself with flour for 24 hours!" . Probably today with mealworms, if you can get one of the copies that have now been 700.
Following this happening, Paik made a name for himself through a number of performances in which he continued to work with Charlotte Mooran:
"Opera Sexttronique" from 1967, during which the barbust -acting Charlotte Mooran was arrested (the scandal about her subsequent conviction should lead to a new more liberal law with more freedom in artistic performances).
"TV Bra for Living Sculpture" followed , which Mooran performed on their breasts with two small television sets, or in the following video:
From 1972 to 1991, the "TV Bed" Charlotte Mooran, who was deeply admired by Paik.
1975: "Video Fish" , several aquariums next to each other, in which fish swim around in front of the same number of monitors where videos of floating fish run.
Today the concept has already been exceeded by “Videos for Your Cat” :
(Videos for the domestic cat, topic of aquarium).
In 1976 Mooran was there again, in "TV Cello" she plays the cello built from television, which conjures up other cello playing musicians on the screen with every sheet line:
During the period of cooperation with Mooran, Paik's goal was to bring music to a level of development with art and literature. He also wanted to make sex a topic that no longer caused an impetus in public. In one of his fluxus works, the performer is instructed to climb into the vagina of a living sperm whale (unfortunately its reaction has not been handed down).
“Family of Robot” was finished, with family members from three generations, grandmother and grandfather, mother and father, aunt and uncle and children. The generations differed in the material and told a family history, different stages of media development during the 20th century. Here, Paik presented technology as a product of the human inventive spirit, which at the same time is a possible cause that man loses the relationship to reality.
He humanizes the technology to resist:
You have to know technology very well to be able to survive them ” (quote paik).
Diser philosophical is also illustrated in the media infrastructure "Fish Flies on Sky" by Nam-June Paik in the Museum Kunstpalast (Düsseldorf) & Perpetuum Mobile I (U-Matic video): Einlanalvideo, 4:04 minutes (1987) in the network of tube TVs.
Image source: Michael Bielicky, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
In 1988, for the Olympic Summer Games in Seoul, Paik "The More The Better" a remarkable media tower from 1,003 monitors.
In 1989 Paik installed the "TV Buddha" , on the screen and in front of it, about the meaning and nonsense of the Buddhas on the screen, you can find out more on the YouTube channel of the Museum Kunstpalast Düsseldorf:
In 1990 the "Pre-Bell-Man" , an order work as part of the reopening of the German Post Museum, was created Paik's collage of the modern knight from various parts of radio and TV sets, almost exclusively from objects from the collections of the German Post Museum.
Only the horse of the knight acquired Paik in a Venetian junk shop, the Pre-Bell-Man stands in front of the newly open museum for communication in Frankfurt am Main.
by Dontworry/Kolja21 [CC-BY-SA-3.0], via Wikimedia Commons
From 1990 to 1997 the K 456 and the Family of Robot followed a third robot wave in which he z. B. replica some of his heroes.
Like "Gertrude Stein" (1990) or "Beuys Voice" (1990) and the Watchdog II (1997), only real with a surveillance camera at the tailing and speaker tubes.
In honor of John Cage, who died in 1992, the "Piano Piece" , videos about 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 points to six of the screens.
Also in 1992 the "Brandenburger Gate" (today Collection Museum Ludwig Cologne), a multi-monitor installation of 200 larger and smaller television devices in the form of the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin.
In 1995 Paik materialized the "Electronic Superhighay" from 1974 in a grotesque mammoth installation full of senseless and boring images, framed by an eye and feeling of taste disturbing neon bustle. Culture criticism of the finest and subtle enough that the addressed series junkie-flat thinkers and Blinky-Shiny fans do not notice that they are meant (grins in the middle not Trump out of the screen?).
Here are a little "paik to look at" through 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 preoccupation with the new media was not over, at the beginning of the twenty -one century he laser technology into his work. In his latest installation, he projected laser beams onto cotton screens, flowing water and smoke-filled room structures; In this "post-video project", he brought the articulation a little further.
"Exhibition Talks" Nam June Paiks with curator John Hanhardt, the "post-video project" "The Worlds of Nam June Paik" in the Guggenheim Museum , in which this installation was also shown.
At the beginning of the new millennium, Paik gives us an outlook on how cinema and video can merge with electronic and digital media in new forms of expression and image techniques. He suggests that in the 21st century we will experience the end of video and television in the form known to us that a transformation of our visual culture is imminent.
Another outlook into the future: Paik has the networked world in which humanity exchanges digital film documents across the globe, only experienced in its very first beginnings. He could no longer comment in his art for reasons of age, for reasons of age, the possibility of a "final revolution of the Enlightenment" , in which moving image (knowledge, information) can be passed on from everyone to everyone in no time.
