Nam June Paik (Walter Robinson review)

Robinson, Walter. "Nam June Paik." Art in America 75 (June 1987): 157.

Rev. of exhibition at New York's Holly Solomon Gallery. WR maintains Paik is famous for bringing together witty clichés from television and emblems of humanity, religion, nature, and vision—all of it mediated by avant-garde art. The new work in this show includes video paintings (video stills are airbrushed in canvas by computerized machines) and the 1986 Family of Robot, in which each figure in three generations of robots is constructed of stacked video monitors mounted in period housings. WR is especially taken by Baby, "a futuristic high-tech spectacle," and by the "impressive metaphor of consciousness" the flickering video screens provide in these figures. Color illus. of Grandfather. See also Paik rev. by Robert Mahoney.[1]