Nam June Paik Artist Nam

Nam June Paik

Artist Nam June Paik

Nam June Paik, known to many in the art world as the first "video artist" (Strosnider, 2006), passed away in January 2006. He was a Korean-born innovator who left his homeland in 1950 due to the Korean War. He studied music history and composition at the University of Tokyo and later at the University of Munich and Freiberg Conservatory he took up additional studies in music theory, music history and piano technique, according to the article in the journal Afterimage.

How did Paik get started in his unique art form? It is reported that American composer John Cage - who had become friends with Paik in Germany - encouraged Paik to "...explore radical experimentation in his composition work," Strosnider writes. Paik apparently took Cage's suggestion to heart, because by 1960, the Korean-born artist was blending "avant-garde performance art" with piano pieces. In one instance, the artist played a piece by Frederick Chopin and when it was completed, he leaped into the audience and much to the shock and surprise of those in attendance, he took scissors and cut off John Cage's necktie.

From there, Paik left the building and went to a corner bar, from where he called the venue he had just performed in and notified management that the performance had ended. One might say that Paik was learning how to become a trailblazer in the world or art. According to the piece by Luke Strosnider, Paik's latest video work (a "retrospective") was shown in the Guggenheim Museum in New York City in 2000. Prior to that, Paik had become an international icon in the progressive art world, and one of his more noted projects was "TV Buddha" which, Strosnider writes, "commented on the transcendental nature of modern media" by putting an "ancient Buddha statue" directly in front of a video camera. The live feed was sent to a TV monitor sitting in front of the Buddha, and hence, the Buddha could (in an artistic sense) "contemplate" the image of itself.

Meanwhile, the Buddha project has been written about extensively; in the journal, Religion and the Arts (Smith, 2000), the writer explains that beyond entertaining and provocative art, the TV Buddha is perhaps a "complex and theological and metaphysical construct." And as meaningful as the Buddha work is, Smith claims that commentary on the project is "surprisingly sparse." One of the critiques of the Buddha that Smith alludes to is that of John Hanhardt, who wrote in 1982 that the Buddha "...contemplates itself, a self-portrait, which fulfills a meditative stare inward to the self."

Another critique of the Buddha alluded to by Smith originates with Patricia Mellencamp (in a 1995 article she wrote) and references Zen Buddhism. Mellencamp takes a position that Western criticism of Paik's work gives a token "nod" to the "premises of Eastern philosophical and spiritual beliefs," but the truth is that references to Paik's epiphanies and transcendence "are often tossed off" by Western critics "rather glibly." In other words, Western scholars have too often given short shrift to the true philosophical and spiritual themes that Paik has put forward.

Mellencamp goes on to say - and Smith clearly relates to this - that many critics did not (and do not) understand the "rigorous discipline (and years) it takes" to achieve the transcendence that Paik has achieved. "Truth and meaning can be found in silence and understood through experience," Mellencamp writes (and Smith quotes) on page 361 of the journal article.

Yet another critique of the TV Buddha was published in 1986 by Philippe Sohet, who sees the TV Buddha as "autobiographical" and represents to Sohet "a blending or confrontation of Eastern tradition and Western technology," Smith explains. But that's where Smith's acceptance of Sohet's interpretation of the Buddha ends; from there, Sohet's spin is "inventive yet contrived," because Sohet believes the tension of a living live image of the Buddha, that is "fixed and immutable" is shallow. The Buddha and the video camera "never really look at one another" in Sohet's opinion, who forms that opinion because the Buddha's eyes are half open (he is meditating).

Smith also writes that in addition to the Buddha, and the whole dramatic theme, the mound in which the video monitor is embedded also "...bears specific symbolic references." That is because the mound is like a "supa" - which is a grave mound and similar to the place where Buddha's ashes were originally interred. Smith believes that much of Pait's work is underappreciated for its spiritual value, and lauded only because it is art that shocks the senses.