Skip to Main Content

MHS Library | Nam June Paik

Works by Nam June Paik on Pinterest

Works

Random Access, 1963 (2000 version). Strips of audiotape, open-reel audio deck, extended playback head, and speakers, dimensions vary with installation. Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York

TV Garden, 1974 (2000 version). Video installation with color television sets and live plants, dimensions vary with installation. Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York.

Global Groove 2004, 2003–04. Three video walls comprised of 64 rear-projection video displays, one video wall processor, four channels of video and audio, dimensions variable. Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York 2003.

Source: Guggenheim

About Nam June Paik

Nam June Paik (July 20, 1932 – January 29, 2006) was a Korean American artist. He worked with a variety of media and is considered to be the founder of video art.[1][2] He was married to the video artist Shigeko Kubota in 1965. Paik is credited with an early usage (1974) of the term "electronic super highway" in application to telecommunications.

Born in Seoul in 1932, the youngest of five siblings, Paik had 2 older brothers and 2 older sisters. His father owned a major textile manufacturing firm. As he was growing up, he was trained as a classical pianist. In 1950, Paik and his family had to flee from their home in Korea, during the Korean War. His family first fled to Hong Kong, but later moved to Japan. Six years later he graduated from the University of Tokyo where he wrote a thesis on the composer Arnold Schoenberg.

Paik then moved to Germany to study music history with composer Thrasybulos Georgiades at Munich University.[4] While studying in Germany, Paik met the composers Karlheinz Stockhausen and John Cage and the conceptual artists Joseph Beuys and Wolf Vostellwho inspired him to work in the field of electronic art.[5]

Nam June Paik then began participating in the Neo-Dada art movement, known as Fluxus, which was inspired by the composer John Cage and his use of everyday sounds and noises in his music. He made his big debut at an exhibition known as Exposition of Music-Electronic Television, in which he scattered televisions everywhere and used magnets to alter or distort their images. In a 1960 piano performance in Cologne, he played Chopin, threw himself on the piano and rushed into the audience, attacking Cage and pianist David Tudor by cutting their clothes with scissors and dumping shampoo on their heads.[6]

Read more on Wikipedia.

Subject guide created by

contact Tania Sheko 

Website dedicated to Nam June Paik

Nam June Paik Studio is a website dedicated to the artist.

Nam June Paik at the NGA