Nam June Paik played a leading role in bridging the gap between art and technology. Always innovative, his work encompassed a variety of artistic genres, from sculpture and performance to music and live broadcasting. Most biographies call Paik the “father of video art,” and he probably did invent the medium in 1965, when he shot footage of a papal procession with the first Sony Portapak to reach the United States.

Untitled (Buddha, hat, violin) encompasses several key themes that form the basis of Paik’s art: his lifelong exploration of Zen Buddhism; his engagement with television as a medium; the role string instruments and performance played in his oeuvre, and his relationship with Fluxus, an interdisciplinary group of artists and performers in the 1960s and 70s whose experimental art performances emphasized process over a finished work. The small white figure of the Buddha references an early work of his (in which a sculpture of Buddha gazes into its own image, relayed through a closed circuit television system). Embedded within the hat is a small television—one of the original Watchman devices—suggesting the coexistence of electronics and music performed by a person. Paik’s approach follows the Buddhist belief that all things are interdependent and suggests that technology is not in conflict with nature but rather an extension of the human realm. The hat is a powerful reminder of the close relationship between Paik and German artist Joseph Beuys (who was known for appearing in his social sculptures wearing a similar hat). Having first met in Düsseldorf in 1961, Paik and Beuys enjoyed a shared background—their countries, Korea and Germany, were both divided by the Cold War; and both wanted to unite Europe and Asia, man and nature, and the scientific and the spiritual in their work.