ABOVE: Nam June Paik, the pioneering video artist, died on Sunday at 73.

Nam June Paik, or Mr. Television as we call him around here, died on Sunday at the age of 73. He was married to fellow video artist Shigeko Kubota and had been in declining health since a stroke in 1996. Paik is famous for his pioneering and influential work in video and installation art, having been the first artist known to have used televisions in a sculpture (this according to the obit in the New York Times), and the first installation to make use of a portable video recorder.

There was a big retrospective at the Guggenheim in 2000, which further showed off Paik’s work with lasers, avant garde music, robotics, and massive arrays of TVs. For the legions of video artists who followed, and their cryptic, impenetrable, often deadly serious and equally deadly dull videos, Paik was Adam himself, a one-man big bang, and his witty, articulate, and humane artworks remain the gold standard.

LINK: New York Times > Nam June Paik, 73, Dies; Pioneer of Video Art Whose Work Broke Cultural Barriers