Nam Jone Paik

For the last 45 years the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C. has served as the premier venue in hosting the largest collection of art made in the United States. In addition to the museum being the largest art museum in the country, it also hosts educational program for schools and hosts traveling exhibitions.

One of the museums current exhibitions is The Nam June Paik Collection at the Renwick Gallery, inside the museum. The Nam June Paik Collection showcases the work of Korean-American visual artist Nam June Paik. Paik, born in 1932 was considered to be the first video artist. He uses a combination of technology, instruments, household items and plants for his work.  Nam June Paik moved to New York in 1964 and began work with various musicians for live performance pieces, which gave him more notoriety.

The Smithsonian exhibition of Paik’s work holds several immersive works. While his work may be a bit off putting or difficult to interpret initially, I found his “Megaton Matrix” to be one of his most appealing works. The Megatron Matrix itself takes up an entire wall and is remnant of a jumbotron at a sporting event. The only difference is that the images on the television monitors reminded me of the glory days of MTV. The graphics reminded me of the late 80’s and 90’s when advancements in technology were new. What took me by surprise with the Megatron Matrix is Paik’s heavy concentration on colors, primitive computer generated images while another ten percent of the images focus on nudity and sex. The strategic placing and the sizing of the sexual themed imagery is interesting as once you spot them, you are enthralled and captivate by them completely ignoring the images and colors on the dominate images.

Another one of Paik’s works was the “Prepared Piano”. I did not completely understand the concept or the reasoning behind the piece – it ultimately led me to walk away completely uninterested. There was nothing captivating about a damaged piano. There is nothing captivating about an out of tune piano. Not at all to discredit it’s art affect, it was not appealing to me.

I am completely captivated by Paik’s imagination and visual display. The “Robot” family was a very unique use of television monitors to create bodies. In my head, the Robot Family was the perfect entertainment tool – a robot to perform all of your household cleaning duties, while being able to tune into multiple channels at once? Perfect.

The most impressive work in the exhibit was the “Electronic Highway”. I believe that this was Paik’s most captivating work. This layered piece was reflective of some of his common threads in his work. Again he combined television monitors, colors and the use of reality in his work. I thought it was brilliant how the television monitors to form the United States, and then used video footage to associate it with a particular state while using tube lighting to divide the states.

All in all I think Paik’s work makes one statement – society has often escaped technology to ignore nature and human interaction. I believe his work was reflective on attempting to combine nature and human interaction to make the human experience much more relevant and tangible. I found that the Electronic Highway was the most effect exhibit – simply because I felt it was the most real and relevant. The way that Paik, a foreign national had come to learn an exceptional amount of information about the States and incorporated facts and stereotypes in the piece were brilliant.

The tour guide started the tour by stating, “Art is the way we communicate our experiences.” I’ll end by stating, “Art is the way we communicate our experiences.” It was Paik’s experiences that were more of a social commentary on society and how we should see the world as an interconnected piece of art to enhance the human experience.