Violin with String

It is important to know something about the artist’s background when exploring the work of Nam June Paik. Korean-born Paik studied aesthetics, music, and art history in Tokyo and wrote a thesis on Arnold Schönberg. In the mid-1950s, he moved to Germany to continue his studies. There he met the composers Luigi Nono, John Cage, David Tudor, and Karlheinz Stockhausen. It was especially Cage’s openness for coincidences and non-compositional noise that had a lasting influence on Paik’s work. After redesigning a piano as an interactive and audiovisual object for action performances in 1958, a few years later Paik turned to the violin. “Violin with String” is an object that was used in a frequently repeated performance in which the artist dragged a violin on a string while wandering around streets and the countryside. String is a word with several meanings, and Paik reinterpreted the term in connection with the violin by having the classical instrument collide with public space. One year later he went a step further with “One for Violin Solo”. The violin is slowly lifted up and, with the lights switched off, suddenly smashed up on the edge of a table.