Nam June Paik:
#1 Video Artist

Following the memorial service friends and fans of NAM JUNE PAIK told Skip about the importance of this great artist in their own lives:

Paul Garrin (Video artist/ Internet innovator) - "Nam June was the quintessential free spirit, world traveler, global citizen and incredible thinker and visionary. Just amazing caring, loving friend."

Yoko Ono (Artist/Fluxus Member/Performer) – "He advised me by being him"

Kit Fitzgerald (Video Artist/Producer) – "Marshall McLuhan kind of sparked, but Nam June enveloped."

John Hanhardt (Senior Curator media arts, Guggenheim Museum) – "He was opening up new avenues for us, meaning everybody…meaning the people watching this tape."

Ryuichi Sakamoto (Artist, Musician, Int’l Pop Star) – "I learned, you know, being a Taoist with technology – to survive this century."

Beryl Korot (Video Artist, Co-editor, Radio, Software) – "In those early days, when people didn’t even know there was such thing as video art, there’s a kind of bonding, YOU know, between all of us."

Bill Viola (Video Artist) – "He’s my master and he always will be."

Merce Cunningham (Renowned Avant-garde artist/Choreographer/Performer) – "About fun. About fun. I mean it was so funny. He was a marvelous humorist.

Carolee Schneeman (Artist/ Fluxus member/Performer) – risk, audacity and fun.

Russell Connor (Artist/Curator/Art Administrator – It was all right to mix humor and art. That was a big lesson for me."

Manny - "He was always challenging us. He was opening up new avenues for us, meaning everybody. Meaning for those people watching this tape, too."

Bill Viola (Video Artist) – "He was a very astute businessman. A very astute politician. He really had a vision of the art as being a part of the worldwide cultural network. Totally before the web. The world we’re living in right now is his world. He visualized that. He was the pioneer. And he combined all the art forms, too. He’s very loose and lucid and he just keeps moving."

Dmitri Devyatkin (Video Artist/Collaborator w/ NJP) – "I can tell you that when I was editing with Nam June, he always used to say, 'A mistake is not a mistake.'"

Wulf Herzogenrath (Director Kusthalle Bremen Art Museum, Germany) – "This is what I learned. That you have to think positive. As an American, you say with the tongue in the cheek. Not straight as we Germans normally are, if it changes in little different ways, say this is a positive idea."

Bob Harris (Video Artist/Video Curator) – "From the fact mentioned by his nephew (they’re a business family) that he taught me that your time is money."

Barbara London (Video Curator MoMA) – "He was a genius."

Gerry O’Grady (Educator/Writer/Historian/Curator Producer) – "I wasn’t a great respecter of his art, so called, you know? But he changed the whole concept, like Andy Warhol, of what art was."

Nina Sobel (Video Artist/Performer/Educator) – "For me, Nam June was the spirit that lifted me off the ground and into the air. Because his smile brought me everywhere. And he got joy out of seeing you BE… and you knew that. And that’s what made him special."

Liz Phillips (Sound Artist/Composer/Performer/Inventor) – "What did I learn. Nam June made a profound and deep effect on my life when I was in high school. I went to the Howard Weiss Gallery and I saw the magnet on the TV, this big magnet pulling this face and I thought if he can do what he wants to do, I can do what I want to do. So it was absolute connection. So I set out to meet him. I went to the performance with Charlotte Norman and we really got to know each other very well a few years later at the Rose Art Museum. From then on I’d drive him around. He’s very generous. He booked me at Joe’s way before – I said I’m not ready. He said, 'I already signed your name.' No one ever understood stuff between music and art before. No one was ready for that."

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