Nam June Paik studied music aesthetics at the School of Aesthetics and Art History,
Faculty of Letters, the University of Tokyo. After graduation, he went to Germany to
study contemporary music. While in Germany, he met the avant-garde composer John
Cage who exerted a powerful impact upon Mr. Paik. In 1959, he shocked the audience by
destroying a piano. After the performance, he joined the Dutch avant-garde artist group
Fluxus and continued to carry out a number of performances with the objective of
destroying existing art. Having discovered diverse possibilities in television as a new
media, Mr. Paik held his first-ever solo exhibition in 1963, using 13 TV sets and carrying
out video experiments with magnets. This innovation later became the prototype of video
art.
In the following year, Mr. Paik moved to New York, and with another member of Fluxus
and cellist Charlotte Moorman, continued to conduct numerous surprising performances,
using a cello and TV sets in many parts of the world for the next twenty years or so.
During those years Mr. Paik gradually established his reputation and status as a visual
artist. Furthermore, he has released unique visual art works with dazzling colours and
forms one after another, fully utilizing his new video apparatus 'Paik/Abe Video
Synthesizer' which he developed with the help of a Japanese engineer, Shuja Abe. In the
early 1980s, he was at last recognized as the world's leading artist in the field. Through
his creative activities, Mr. Paik has created an unparalleled visual world that is different
from both photography and film and has laid the foundation of video art as a new
expressive area of art. Mr. Paik is now called the 'Father of Video Art'. Ever since, he
has been unfolding successive new art scenes by planning innovative art works such as
video sculpture, video installation, and satellite art. Satellite art links the world by
communication satellite. At present, he continues to stand in the forefront of visual art.
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