PAIK, NAM JUNE
1932 Seoul–2006 Miami Beach/Florida

Title: From Seoul to Budapest.
Date: 1988/1991.
Technique: Video installation in wooden box with nine screens, light box with photos, bronze deer on stone and wire mesh hat.
Measurement: Screens: 20.5 x 7 cm each. Wooden bo x : 90 x 153 x 38 cm cm.


The bronze on the stone used in the installation is the prototype for an edition created by the artist in 1988.



The video was produced by Jean Paul Fargier in collaboration with the French broadcaster Canal Plus in 1990.



The work is fully functional.



Provenance:
- - Basler Kunstverein

- Private collection Cologne (acquired from previous owner in 1991)


Exhibition:
- Kunsthalle Basel, 1991

- Wilhelm-Lehmbruck-Museum, Duisburg 2002


Literature:
- Exhib. cat. Fluxus and Video Sculpture, Wilhelm Lehmbruck Museum, Duisburg 2002, cat. no. 49, p. 132



- A personal shrine in memory of his artist friend Joseph Beuys

- A highly aesthetic fusion of different media and cultural contexts

- Paik is regarded as the founder of video and media art



Classicism and Noise

Nam June Paik, composer and visual artist, is regarded as the founder of video and media art. After studying philosophy, musicology, and art history in Tokyo, Paik moved to West Germany in 1956, where he increasingly turned toward experimental music in Munich and Freiburg. Between 1958 and 1963, Paik worked alongside Karlheinz Stockhausen at the WDR Studio for Electronic Music in Cologne. His encounter with the American composer John Cage in Darmstadt in 1958 proved to be a decisive formative experience.

Paik subsequently developed the concept of his action music and joined the Fluxus movement in 1962. Through his performances, he shocked audiences by disrupting the classical canon with avant-garde modes of expression—employing technologically manipulated television sets alongside prepared pianos and noisy sound objects. Television soon became Paik’s preferred medium and shaped the technological direction of his later practice, from which emerged an electronic form of painting as well as his TV Objects and TV Sculptures.

The year 1961 marked the beginning of a friendship lasting more than twenty-five years with Joseph Beuys. At the center of their many collaborations stood the desire to transcend boundaries between cultures and artistic forms, forging connections between Western and Eastern philosophy.



Korean Family and Artistic Kinship

The present work, From Seoul to Budapest (1991), is shaped by the symbolic and spiritual bond between the artists. It directly relates to Paik’s performance A Pas de Loup: de Seoul à Budapest, staged in 1990 in the courtyard of Gallery Hyundai in Seoul as a commemorative ceremony for Joseph Beuys, who had died in 1986.

The foundation of Paik’s actions lay in a traditional Korean shamanistic ritual intended to guide the souls of the dead into the afterlife. Paik intertwines his spiritual role as mediator between worlds with his own biographical journey from Korea to Europe and his relationship with Beuys. The two cities named in the title unite past and future: while Seoul symbolizes Paik’s origins, Budapest points toward the continuation—beyond death—of the artists’ intellectual friendship and references a planned joint performance in the Eastern European city.



An Intimate Shrine of Memory

The video installation incorporates a wide range of visual material. Across nine monitors appear alternating images from filmed recordings of Coyote III, the piano duet performed by Beuys and Paik in Tokyo in 1984, alongside imagery of a couple dressed in traditional Korean clothing.

Between the rows of monitors, a lightbox presents a sequence of historical photographs from Korea—including personal family images and advertising material for the textile factory owned by Paik’s family dating to 1929. In a group photograph from the 1930s, Paik appears as a small child beside his parents. A portrait from 1920 depicts his grandfather, Paik Yun-su.

While the lower row of four screens remains uninterrupted, the upper row is broken by an open compartment containing a small sculpture of a roaring stag—an emblem of German folklore—poised upon a rocky ledge. Resting atop the surrounding wooden structure lies a wire-mesh hat, serving as both a characteristic feature and emblematic stand-in for Beuys.

In 1984, Paik had returned to his homeland for the first time since fleeing the Korean War. This renewed engagement with his origins inaugurated a phase of quiet introspection and mourning that would continue until his death. Through the intertwining of biographical and artistic relationships, the work reveals itself as a profoundly personal shrine—one in which Paik simultaneously honors his ancestors and commemorates his companion, Joseph Beuys.

Bettina Haiss



Estimated shipping costs for this lot:
The lot is unsuitable for parcel shipping. Transport only by shipping company after consultation following the auction.

additional shipping insurance


Shipping insurance

up to total invoice amount of 25,000 Euros: max. 41.65 Euro

over a total invoice amount of 25,000 Euros: 1.8 o/oo


USA by individual arrangement after the auction.




#Nam June Paik #Fluxus #Media Art #USA #Contemporary Art #1990s #Technique #Film / Video #Scultpures.







In accordance with §26 UrhG (German Copyright Act), VAN HAM is obliged to pay a statutory resale royalty on the sale proceeds of all original works of fine art and photography whose authors have not been deceased for 70 years prior to the end of the calendar year of the sale. The buyer shall contribute 1.5% of the hammer price to this fee.