Nam June Paik: Moon Is the Oldest TV (2023) Directed by Amanda Kim 7B (documentary)
Nam June Paik is an influential artist of the 20th century but, outside of art circles in New York, Paris and Seoul, few people have ever heard of him. That's largely because he was an avant garde artist whose experiments were denounced or misunderstood until late in his career when he came up with a series of notable pieces and installations that represented a grand culmination of his life's work. He specialized in visual media, TV and computers primarily, which was one reason why his work wasn't taken seriously. No one else was even thinking about doing that. A protege of such ultra experimental artists as John Cage and Karlheinz Stockhausen and a fan of the atonal music of German composer Arnold Schoenberg, Paik's radical approach to visual art took time to find supporters. Yet, prophetically, it ended up predicting a future where technology would radically transform visual representation. He saw the kind of future that had YouTube in it, and, now he looks like a prophet for doing so.
Avant garde art is always a challenge to the viewer/listener/reader. Much of it seems intolerable at the time, and self-indulgent in the extreme. On the other hand, avant garde pieces like Stravinsky's Rite of Spring and Jackson Pollock's paintings can revolutionize an art form while eventually becoming accepted. The strength of this documentary, though, has little to do with a debate about the value of this kind of art. Rather the achievement of Nam June Paik: Moon Is the Oldest TV rests with its portrayal of the human being making this art. Paik had creative visions that didn't really fit any artistic category. He went to incredible lengths to stay true to the art he wanted to make that didn't have a name yet. It wasn't until he had the idea to place a statue of Buddha in from of a television set, a work that finally captured a large audience's imagination, that he started making any money at all. He poured what he made into his later installations which were bold, visionary extensions of his original, more modest works. Thankfully his work was acknowledged in major galleries around the world in his lifetime. But I think what I will remember most from this documentary is Paik's dogged determination that allowed him to create the art he wanted. That all this came from a very gentle, very likeable man underscores the way in which artistic expression can become a driving part of the life force for seemingly the most unlikely people.
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