Description:

Nam June Paik
Korean American, (1932 - 2006)
Etching on Etching, 1984
etching and aquatint in 10 colors on Rives BFK paper
Pencil signed lower right with blindstamp, edition 5/58.

Provenance: Carl Solway Gallery, Cincinnati, OH
From the estate of Jim and Anna White, Indianapolis, IN

Biography from the Archives of askART: Born in Seoul, South Korea, Nam June Paik became the pioneer of video art* in the United States. He coined the phrase "electronic superhighway", and with his work, demonstrated how artists could use the medium of television creatively. Part of his innovation was building a video synthesizer that allows video images to be reshaped and altered with color. In this and other ways, he expanded "the traditional definitions of art-making . . . while simultaneously initiating and influencing creative developments in the technical realms of television editing and image making" (ARTNews 5/99).

In spite of a stroke suffered in 1997, he continued to work and focused on laser installations, which were featured in a 2000 retrospective at the Solomon R Guggenheim Museum in New York. ARTNews magazine, May 1999, featured him as one of the top 25 most influential western artists.

He first began thinking about video as an art form in 1959, when he wrote about the idea in a letter to performance* artist John Cage. Meeting Cage in Germany shortly after was the turning point in Paik's life. Cage performed, at that time, by smashing a violin in a work called One for Violin.

Paik was trained in philosophy and music at the University of Munich and then the conservatory in Freiburg. In 1961, he became involved with the Fluxus* movement and then he and a friend began to experiment with television, learning the technical aspects as well as exploring the artistic. His first show was in 1963 at the Galerie Parnass in Wuppertal, Germany.

His wife of more than thirty years was Shigeko Kubota, a video artist whom he credits for many creative ideas including the waterfall at his Guggenheim retrospective.

In 1996, Paik suffered a stroke but remained active, continuing to draw and develop new sculptures and conceptual works from his New York studio. On January 29, 2006, Nam June Paik died in his home in Miami Beach, Florida, survived by his wife.

In 2009, representatives of his estate chose the Smithsonian Art Museum as the Paik archival repository. There a Paik Center is being established for scholars and artists to convey "the tangible sense of the artist's hand in transforming video and television into an artist's medium." (Vogel) The archive includes Paik's early writings on art history, correspondance, the complete set of video tapes, production notes, sketches and notebooks, early model television sets, hand-drawn plans for his video synthesizer, and objects from his SoHo studio such as toys, folk sculpture and the desk where he did paintings.

Sources:
ARTnews, May 1999
John Hanhardt, "Nam June Paik, 1932-2006", Art in America, April 2006, p. 39.
Carol Vogel, "Inside Art", The New York Times, 5/1/2009, p. C24

  • Dimensions: 18 1/4"H x 21 1/2"W(sight),
  • Medium: etching and aquatint in 10 colors on Rives BFK paper

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