Nam June Paik: Prisoner of the Cathode Ray

Nam June Paik is the founding father of video art. For more than four decades, he has explored and exploited television technology and used it as an artist’s medium. Paik confesses that he has become “prisoner of the cathode ray.” Over the years he has created an impressive, visionary and influential body of work that has not only been shown world wide but has greatly influenced both commercial and artistic media. On this program, we see Paik’s 1982 retrospective at the Whitney Museum, his 1988 exhibition at the Dorothy Goldeen Gallery in Los Angeles and two recent shows at the Holly Solomon Gallery in New York. Interviews are with Nam June Paik, art dealers Dorothy Goldeen and Holly Solomon and John Hanhardt, senior curator of film and media arts at the Guggenheim Museum.