World-renowned artist counted as the founder of video art
| Life | 1932 ~ 2006 |
| Era | 현대 |
| Clan | 수원 백씨 |
Nam June Paik (Baek Nam-jun, 1932-2006) was a Korean-born artist celebrated worldwide as the founder of video art. He took part in the avant-garde Fluxus movement and pioneered a new medium.
With works of the early 1960s such as Random Access Music, Exposition of Music-Electronic Television, Thirteen Distorted TVs and Zen for TV, he opened video art as a genre; he was the only East Asian among the founding Fluxus artists.
Bringing television and video into art, he completed a trilogy of live satellite broadcasts - Good Morning Mr. Orwell (1984), Bye Bye Kipling (1986) and Wrap Around the World (1988) - that greatly influenced the international art world. In 1992, for his sixtieth birthday, the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Gwacheon held a major retrospective.
His early work using TV sets as instruments and canvases laid groundwork for later installation and media art. The Nam June Paik Art Center in Yongin, Gyeonggi Province, bears his name (check its current operating details).
Good Morning Mr. Orwell (1984) linked New York and Paris by satellite and was broadcast worldwide, introduced as an answer to the surveillance society foretold in George Orwell's 1984. It was followed by Bye Bye Kipling (1986) and Wrap Around the World (1988).
Besides Nam June Paik, the Suwon Baek produced scholars such as Baek Nak-jun and Baek Nam-un, the warrior Baek Dong-su and the doctor Baek In-je. The character 南 of the 28th generation in the common scheme appears in the names of both Paik and Baek Nam-un, though whether they share a branch could not be confirmed.