Paik Nam June

signed in Hanja and English and dated 93 on the side

Carl Solway Gallery, Cincinnati
Private Collection
Sotheby's, London, 16 October 2009, lot 274
Acquired by the present owner from the above sale

This work is generally in good condition. There are minor scuffs throughout the body of the robot, and minor scratches to the wooden swing which maybe due to the previous set up methods.
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Channelling Robot
Paik Nam June

Heralded as the ‘father’ of video art, Paik Nam June’s pioneering role in establishing the medium of video and digital art as a contemporary art form is undisputed. He blurred past distinctions between the sciences, fine art and popular culture to create a new visual language that was pertinent to the sixties. This period was an epoch where lives and households were being revolutionised, permeated by both electronics and media through the emerging technology of the television set, which was starting to take on a more significant role. Inspired by a mix of utopian and dystopian ideals of the modern age, with sheer humour and wit, Paik seized each new technological development: from the television to digital editing systems, he mastered their capabilities and remade them into radical new forms; thereby creating truly thought-provoking and ground-breaking works that re-established a unique perception of the meaning of art in the electronic age. The cultural significance of his work is irrefutable, and they have been exhibited and extensively collected by numerous esteemed institutional collections globally such as the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Guggenheim New York and Tate, London. As aptly described by fellow Fluxus artist Yoko Ono, “[Paik Nam June] created a revolution in art.”¹

Born in Korea in 1932, Paik lived and studied art, aesthetics and music in elite institutions in Japan and Germany. He eventually settled in the United States in 1964 and played a pivotal role in the flourishing Fluxus movement in their rejection of modernist aesthetics and conventions. Bearing an infinitely transformative quality, his work brought the language of avant-gardism to the equivocal landscape of contemporary culture by erasing the subjectivity of an ordinary object. For instance, he took the ubiquitous television set and manipulated, juxtaposed and reinterpreted it with a spirit and play of freewheeling invention. Conveying his desire to thwart the divide between art and quotidian objects, he ultimately strove towards the humanisation of technology, which is a constant thematic strand that runs throughout his artistic oeuvre and is epitomised by his trademark robot sculptures such as Robot on a Swing (Lot 818).

Paik enjoyed collecting toy robots, and the robots he made out of television sets and radios are some of his most signature works, using the commonplace television set and converting it into the basic building block for his sculptural installations. His first endeavour into robot sculptures took place in 1964, a period when robotics was still in its infancy. It is during this time that he created Robot K-456, a life-size anthropomorphic kinetic sculpture made out of bits and pieces of metal and cloth. Made in collaboration with engineer Shuya Abe, the robot was able to walk, make noises and mimic other human acts. A significant work in Paik’s foray into robotics, it was chosen to open the exhibition Becoming Robot at the Asia Society, New York, 2014-2015.

Unlike the ambulatory and skeletal Robot K-456, it was only in the 1980s that Paik created clearly figurative sculptures. Among the best known of these would be a collective of sculptures assembled out of antique radios and TVs into human-like forms, the choice of materials distinguishing gender, human scale and age, their monitors displaying a looped video imagery representing the personality and individuality of each robot. Entitled Family of Robot, it replicates the extended family hierarchy of three generations; Mother, Father, Baby, Grandmother, Grandfather, Aunt and Uncle, a structure familiar to Paik’s traditional Korean upbringing. 

Family of Robot initiated Paik’s ongoing series of robot sculptures through the 1990s, of which Robot on a Swing is archetypal of, featuring a child robot sitting on a wooden swing, his arms raised in the air showing his elation. Made up of a turntable to constitute the robot’s head, with antennas alluding hair, a magnifier lamp makes up his arms, neon television screens representing his torso and radio boxes signifying his legs.  The materiality of the objects Nam June Paik chooses to use is never lost in their modified status as art. Experimental throughout his artistic career, Paik never lost a sense of wonder that was filled with childlike innocence and curiosity as epitomised in the current work. Making visible the structures of the mediums used and by altering their original functions, Paik surpasses and creates the latest scientific discovery – the robot an icon of artificial intelligence, and a medium for cultural and philosophical reflections.

1 ‘He was a Revolutionary’ Yoko Ono’s Answers to Questions from Susanne Rennert and Sook-Kyung Lee New York/Dusseldorf/ Liverpool, April 2010 in Nam June Paik (London: Tate Publishing, 2010), p.220.