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拍品专文
“The desire to fly is an idea handed down to us by our ancestors who in their grueling travels across trackless lands in prehistoric times, looked enviously on the birds soaring freely through space at full speed, above all obstacles, on the infinite highway of the air.” -Wilbur Wright
Among the first artists who were quick to recognize the value and need for the recognition of our era's electronic technology as a significant art medium, Paik Nam-June is the widest ranging and most prolific artist. Paik's bold expression and free experimentation, which led him in a more avant-garde direction than his contemporaries, encompass one of the most significant bodies of work in the medium and his work is notable for its tremendous breadth and depth. Paik is widely recognized as a true pioneer, who made an enormous contribution to the development of video as an art form and the history of video art through his Fluxus-based performances, altered television sets of the early 1960s, the groundbreaking videotapes and multi-media installations of the 1970s, humorous video robots of the 1980s and computer based new video images of the 1990s and 2000s.
Wright Brothers is a great example that illustrates Paik's core message of the work throughout his career: As long as technology can be used in a humanistic way for our own advancement, it can create an ideal blend of technology and art that will bring greater diversity and richness to our culture. The collection of television monitors is spawned into the form of an airplane through expressive metamorphosis, and for further accuracy, into the form of the first aircraft invented by the Wright brothers. His virtuoso in technological enthusiasm possibly parallels the Wright brothers’ fervency in the belief that a man could fly. These two pioneers of “technology” both acquired an understand of the systematic mode of activities and limits of logic that spurred their creative enthusiasm. Through the playful liberty in compartmentalizing the norm’s recognition of a television as a solitary box, Paik’s literal action in “thinking outside the box” has constructed his unique niche for utilizing new media technology as a tool for displaying a synthesis of the imaginary, reality and absurdity.
With Paik’s driven curiosity in industrial discoveries, he studied the Wright brothers’ medium into the shape of a vintage airplane. The organization of vintage television sets accompanied by the title Wright Brothers emanates a sense of nostalgia and history. Employing classic wooden framed televisions and bicycle wheels, the artist factually mimics the construction materials used for the Wright Flyer I, built in 1903. The Wright brothers incorporated wheels and structured this innovation with spruce, a lightwood from and evergreen tree. A bicycle inspired this idea, operating as the central device in influencing the Wright brothers’ belief that an unstable vehicle like an aircraft could be controlled and balanced with practice. This particular idiom may perhaps reflect Paik’s initial principle in his determination when experimenting with technology as a new form of kinetic art. By his persistent practice in controlling and balancing the transmission of motion pictures, the artist achieved the fusing and regulating of signal waves to emit brightly fluctuating images in accordance with this aesthetic liking. The artist’s erudite practice in decoding pictures transformed the use of television as mere equipment for image projection to an infinite space for the exploration of images.
A noted media theorist Joshua Meyrowitz states that “Television takes our kids across the globe before parents give them permission to cross the street.” affirming that television is responsible for dissolving the barriers between children and adults, men and women, and even humanizing and discrediting the powerful. Paik’s awareness of the power of television in transforming society is evident in his reorientation of the Wright brother’s creation. The airplane became one of the crucial cultural forces that broaden the horizons of informative exchanges of language and ideas. The development of an aircraft facilitated easy interaction between different countries and the development of television created new social situations. Both inventions permitted the emergence of cultures, developing new cognition that could further the continuous desire for advancement and exploration, reflecting the deep human psyche of the desire to reach for the sky.
Though Paik is perhaps most widely recognized for his prodigious body of video sculptures like Wright Brothers , his experiments with satellite technology, which began in 1977 at Documenta 6 in Kassel, Germany, where he collaborated on a live telecast with Joseph Beuys and Douglas Davis, are significant trials as well to employ new technologies of the era. His live international satellite broadcasts of the 1980s, including Good Morning Mr. Orwell, Bye Bye Kipling, and Wrap Around the World are global video installations that conjoin disparate spatial, contextual and temporal elements. Linking the art world and the media, pop culture and the avant-garde, technology and philosophy, Paik's works resonate with an irreverent humour and subversive brilliance that have influenced contemporary art, video and television. Despite a stroke that debilitated Paik in 1996, he continued his artistic invention of new media such as laser and computer. His last retrospective exhibition, The World of Nam June Paik , which announced the new millennium at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York in February 2000, was the result of his restless effort to experiment with new mediums. The splendid retrospective proved that Paik Nam-June wrote an entirely new page in the development of modern art, one that was aesthetically significant and historically pioneering. For that reason, it influenced the following generations of subsequent artists, encouraging them to adopt non-traditional expressive media to present and interpret their visions of modern society and to explore even broader artistic spaces. Paik's work has deepened the artistic substance of Asian art with its uniqueness and rich cultural implications, but in terms of media art, and the development of modern art in general, he also examined issues that were international in nature and of broad humanistic concern, which made Paik a great 20th century artist, one of the few to achieve truly global influence.
Among the first artists who were quick to recognize the value and need for the recognition of our era's electronic technology as a significant art medium, Paik Nam-June is the widest ranging and most prolific artist. Paik's bold expression and free experimentation, which led him in a more avant-garde direction than his contemporaries, encompass one of the most significant bodies of work in the medium and his work is notable for its tremendous breadth and depth. Paik is widely recognized as a true pioneer, who made an enormous contribution to the development of video as an art form and the history of video art through his Fluxus-based performances, altered television sets of the early 1960s, the groundbreaking videotapes and multi-media installations of the 1970s, humorous video robots of the 1980s and computer based new video images of the 1990s and 2000s.
Wright Brothers is a great example that illustrates Paik's core message of the work throughout his career: As long as technology can be used in a humanistic way for our own advancement, it can create an ideal blend of technology and art that will bring greater diversity and richness to our culture. The collection of television monitors is spawned into the form of an airplane through expressive metamorphosis, and for further accuracy, into the form of the first aircraft invented by the Wright brothers. His virtuoso in technological enthusiasm possibly parallels the Wright brothers’ fervency in the belief that a man could fly. These two pioneers of “technology” both acquired an understand of the systematic mode of activities and limits of logic that spurred their creative enthusiasm. Through the playful liberty in compartmentalizing the norm’s recognition of a television as a solitary box, Paik’s literal action in “thinking outside the box” has constructed his unique niche for utilizing new media technology as a tool for displaying a synthesis of the imaginary, reality and absurdity.
With Paik’s driven curiosity in industrial discoveries, he studied the Wright brothers’ medium into the shape of a vintage airplane. The organization of vintage television sets accompanied by the title Wright Brothers emanates a sense of nostalgia and history. Employing classic wooden framed televisions and bicycle wheels, the artist factually mimics the construction materials used for the Wright Flyer I, built in 1903. The Wright brothers incorporated wheels and structured this innovation with spruce, a lightwood from and evergreen tree. A bicycle inspired this idea, operating as the central device in influencing the Wright brothers’ belief that an unstable vehicle like an aircraft could be controlled and balanced with practice. This particular idiom may perhaps reflect Paik’s initial principle in his determination when experimenting with technology as a new form of kinetic art. By his persistent practice in controlling and balancing the transmission of motion pictures, the artist achieved the fusing and regulating of signal waves to emit brightly fluctuating images in accordance with this aesthetic liking. The artist’s erudite practice in decoding pictures transformed the use of television as mere equipment for image projection to an infinite space for the exploration of images.
A noted media theorist Joshua Meyrowitz states that “Television takes our kids across the globe before parents give them permission to cross the street.” affirming that television is responsible for dissolving the barriers between children and adults, men and women, and even humanizing and discrediting the powerful. Paik’s awareness of the power of television in transforming society is evident in his reorientation of the Wright brother’s creation. The airplane became one of the crucial cultural forces that broaden the horizons of informative exchanges of language and ideas. The development of an aircraft facilitated easy interaction between different countries and the development of television created new social situations. Both inventions permitted the emergence of cultures, developing new cognition that could further the continuous desire for advancement and exploration, reflecting the deep human psyche of the desire to reach for the sky.
Though Paik is perhaps most widely recognized for his prodigious body of video sculptures like Wright Brothers , his experiments with satellite technology, which began in 1977 at Documenta 6 in Kassel, Germany, where he collaborated on a live telecast with Joseph Beuys and Douglas Davis, are significant trials as well to employ new technologies of the era. His live international satellite broadcasts of the 1980s, including Good Morning Mr. Orwell, Bye Bye Kipling, and Wrap Around the World are global video installations that conjoin disparate spatial, contextual and temporal elements. Linking the art world and the media, pop culture and the avant-garde, technology and philosophy, Paik's works resonate with an irreverent humour and subversive brilliance that have influenced contemporary art, video and television. Despite a stroke that debilitated Paik in 1996, he continued his artistic invention of new media such as laser and computer. His last retrospective exhibition, The World of Nam June Paik , which announced the new millennium at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York in February 2000, was the result of his restless effort to experiment with new mediums. The splendid retrospective proved that Paik Nam-June wrote an entirely new page in the development of modern art, one that was aesthetically significant and historically pioneering. For that reason, it influenced the following generations of subsequent artists, encouraging them to adopt non-traditional expressive media to present and interpret their visions of modern society and to explore even broader artistic spaces. Paik's work has deepened the artistic substance of Asian art with its uniqueness and rich cultural implications, but in terms of media art, and the development of modern art in general, he also examined issues that were international in nature and of broad humanistic concern, which made Paik a great 20th century artist, one of the few to achieve truly global influence.