Prints and Drawings Room
View by appointment- Artist
- Nam June Paik 1932–2006
- Medium
- 39 drawings, ink on paper
- Dimensions
- Support, each: 299 × 210 mm
- Collection
- Presented by the Hakuta Family (Tate Americas Foundation) 2014
On long term loan - Reference
- L03799
Summary
Notiz Block Notebook is a small-scale sketchbook produced by the Korean artist Nam June Paik in 1978. Portrait in format, the notebook has a blue cover with a black binding at the top and includes thirty-nine squared paper sheets that are filled with drawings in black ink. Executed in a rough and hurried style, these sketches depict a recurring object visible as a square with two lines in a V-shape that extend upwards and outwards from one of the top-hand corners. This icon represents Paik’s visual interpretation of a television monitor and aerial and is visible as a recurring motif throughout his work. The title of the work is taken from the brand name of the notebook printed on its front cover.
Incorporating hundreds of depictions of his iconic television set – spread across the pages in a variety of different compositions – Notiz Block Notebook demonstrates the importance of the television as a recurring visual motif for the artist, and one that preoccupied him – in works of all mediums – throughout his life. Whilst his media experimentations and sculptural assemblages prioritised the technological capacity of the television set as a tool for image manipulation, these drawings demonstrate his equal fascination in its formal quality as an object. The notebook begins with pages of simple sketches that outline the shape and form of a television set with hurried black lines, before progressing to more complicated drawings in later pages that seem to use detail, shading and repetitive patterning to synthesise the essential qualities of the object.
In addition to a focus on the purely formal qualities of shape and line, the sketches in Notiz Block Notebook also demonstrate Paik’s interest in the wider technological implications of the television set, as addressed by many of the experimental works for which he is best known. One of the pages depicts human figures within the square confines of the screen and, on closer inspection, trees and other objects from the natural and human world. Serving as an engagement with the working function of the television set – the ability of this electronic device to deliver images and information from the outside world to a remotely located viewer – these drawings hint at Paik’s deep understanding of the potential of a global communication network. Other pages in the notebook include thoughts scribbled down in a variety of languages and characters, doodles that connect image and word, and televisions taking on personalities of their own, depicted as comical characters with stylised human features.
Whilst these drawings were produced in the United States following Paik’s move to New York in 1964, it is likely – considering the European brand of the notebook – that they were executed on paper purchased whilst the artist was living in Germany, where he had moved in 1956 as an aspiring composer. This particular ‘notizblock’ – the German word for ‘notebook’ – is an everyday object both in size and appearance, revealing Paik’s willingness to use all and any materials available to him, and is the only instance in which the artist used this particular brand of notebook to sketch in. One unique notebook amongst the many that he produced during his lifetime, Notiz Block Notebook confirms Paik’s ongoing fascination with the television monitor, and his coherent approach to exploring its technological and cultural implications across all media.
Further reading
Nam June Paik, exhibition catalogue, Tate Liverpool, December 2010–March 2011.
Nam June Paik: Global Visionary, exhibition catalogue, Smithsonian American Art Museum, December 2012–August 2013.
Hannah Dewar
September 2013
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