mentions
Robert Frank ~ The Americans @ SFMOMA
Judith Lee Stronach Lectures ~ Gary Snyder
Jack Kerouac - 1956
photo by Tom Palumbo
Showing posts with label SFMOMA. Show all posts
Showing posts with label SFMOMA. Show all posts
February 23, 2026
Jack Kerouac articles/mentions
mentions
Robert Frank ~ The Americans @ SFMOMA
Judith Lee Stronach Lectures ~ Gary Snyder
June 9, 2021
May 15, 2021
SF MOMA: Nam June Paik
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Nam June Paik lying among televisions, Zürich, 1991
photo by Timm Rautert
photo by Timm Rautert
May 8 – October 3, 2021
PRESS RELEASE
SAN FRANCISCO, CA (October 30, 2020; updated April 15, 2021) — Nam June Paik has continued to electrify the art world ever since his 1963 debut of television experiments in Exposition of Music – Electronic Television, his first solo exhibition. Paik challenged visitors to participate by activating modified TV sets and playing radically transformed instruments — blurring the distinction between performer and audience. Playful and interactive, Paik’s immersive environment expanded the boundaries of art, music and technology, and laid the groundwork for his career as the founder of video art.
The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) will present the exclusive U.S. exhibition of Nam June Paik, a major retrospective of Paik’s radical and experimental art, on view from May through October 2021. One of the first truly global artists, Paik (1932–2006) foresaw the importance of mass media and new technologies, coining the phrase ‘electronic superhighway’ in 1974 to predict the future of communication in an internet age. The exhibition will celebrate his multidisciplinary and collaborative practice that encompassed art, music, performance and technology, all in dialogue with philosophies and traditions from both Eastern and Western cultures.
Bringing together over 200 works across all media spanning a five-decade career, from early compositions and performances to large-scale video installations and global satellite projects, Nam June Paik offers an in-depth understanding of the artist’s trailblazing practice. Paik’s innovative, irreverent and entertaining works were informed by his musical background and his vision of an interconnected future. Organized by SFMOMA and Tate Modern, London, with additional presentations at the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam and the National Gallery Singapore, the retrospective will be the first major Paik show in the U.S. in over 20 years and the first ever large-scale survey of his work on the West Coast.
“Nam June Paik is famous for being the historic father of video art, but his groundbreaking and contemporary influence is even more based on his crossover between all media,” said Rudolf Frieling, curator of media arts at SFMOMA. “Paik’s radical visual and musical aesthetic has a natural home here on the West Coast as a place for global connectivity.”
Organized thematically, the exhibition will unite many of Paik’s most iconic and provocative works from throughout his career. In TV Buddha (1974), an 18th-century wooden Buddha appears to watch itself on a modern television, typifying the influence of Zen Buddhist philosophies on Paik’s approach to art and technology. Also on view will be TV Garden (1974–77/2002), an immersive installation featuring dozens of TV sets alongside lush foliage in a futuristic landscape where technology is an integral part of the natural world.
Nam June Paik will partially restage the artist’s pivotal 1963 solo exhibition, Exposition of Music – Electronic Television, and his concept of “action music” (as Paik said, “Why is it music? Because it is not ‘not music’”) will be demonstrated via musical interfaces and some of Paik’s earliest manipulated televisions.
Unique to SFMOMA’s presentation will be two robots, one each dedicated to composer John Cage and choreographer Merce Cunningham, two of Paik’s key collaborators along with artist Joseph Beuys and cellist Charlotte Moorman. John Cage Robot II (1995) and Merce / Digital (1988), among many other works, will highlight Paik’s creative partnerships and collaborative artistic practice.
The retrospective will culminate in the dazzling installation Sistine Chapel (1993), a mesmerizing riot of sound and images from dozens of projectors, taken from the German pavilion which won the Golden Lion award at the Venice Biennale in 1993. Presented in its largest scale of any venue at SFMOMA, and exceeding that of all other works in the exhibition, Sistine Chapel will envelop the audience in an audio-visual remix of Paik’s past videos and collaborators seen throughout the exhibition.
The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) will present the exclusive U.S. exhibition of Nam June Paik, a major retrospective of Paik’s radical and experimental art, on view from May through October 2021. One of the first truly global artists, Paik (1932–2006) foresaw the importance of mass media and new technologies, coining the phrase ‘electronic superhighway’ in 1974 to predict the future of communication in an internet age. The exhibition will celebrate his multidisciplinary and collaborative practice that encompassed art, music, performance and technology, all in dialogue with philosophies and traditions from both Eastern and Western cultures.
Bringing together over 200 works across all media spanning a five-decade career, from early compositions and performances to large-scale video installations and global satellite projects, Nam June Paik offers an in-depth understanding of the artist’s trailblazing practice. Paik’s innovative, irreverent and entertaining works were informed by his musical background and his vision of an interconnected future. Organized by SFMOMA and Tate Modern, London, with additional presentations at the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam and the National Gallery Singapore, the retrospective will be the first major Paik show in the U.S. in over 20 years and the first ever large-scale survey of his work on the West Coast.
“Nam June Paik is famous for being the historic father of video art, but his groundbreaking and contemporary influence is even more based on his crossover between all media,” said Rudolf Frieling, curator of media arts at SFMOMA. “Paik’s radical visual and musical aesthetic has a natural home here on the West Coast as a place for global connectivity.”
Organized thematically, the exhibition will unite many of Paik’s most iconic and provocative works from throughout his career. In TV Buddha (1974), an 18th-century wooden Buddha appears to watch itself on a modern television, typifying the influence of Zen Buddhist philosophies on Paik’s approach to art and technology. Also on view will be TV Garden (1974–77/2002), an immersive installation featuring dozens of TV sets alongside lush foliage in a futuristic landscape where technology is an integral part of the natural world.
Nam June Paik will partially restage the artist’s pivotal 1963 solo exhibition, Exposition of Music – Electronic Television, and his concept of “action music” (as Paik said, “Why is it music? Because it is not ‘not music’”) will be demonstrated via musical interfaces and some of Paik’s earliest manipulated televisions.
Unique to SFMOMA’s presentation will be two robots, one each dedicated to composer John Cage and choreographer Merce Cunningham, two of Paik’s key collaborators along with artist Joseph Beuys and cellist Charlotte Moorman. John Cage Robot II (1995) and Merce / Digital (1988), among many other works, will highlight Paik’s creative partnerships and collaborative artistic practice.
The retrospective will culminate in the dazzling installation Sistine Chapel (1993), a mesmerizing riot of sound and images from dozens of projectors, taken from the German pavilion which won the Golden Lion award at the Venice Biennale in 1993. Presented in its largest scale of any venue at SFMOMA, and exceeding that of all other works in the exhibition, Sistine Chapel will envelop the audience in an audio-visual remix of Paik’s past videos and collaborators seen throughout the exhibition.
Born in Seoul during the Japanese occupation of Korea, Nam June Paik lived and worked in Japan, Germany and the U.S., reflecting a global connectedness that transcended borders and cultural differences. He studied music theory and trained as a musician before experimenting with performance and technology in the 1960s as a means of expanding his artistic production. He developed a multidisciplinary practice across media, and has become synonymous with the electronic image through a prodigious output of manipulated TV sets, live performances, global television broadcasts, single-channel videos and video installations.
Paik collaborated with a community of avant-garde artists and musicians, and played a pivotal role in Fluxus, an international network of artists, composers and poets who engaged in experimental art performances. His groundbreaking work has influenced art, media, music and popular culture for decades, including musicians such as David Bowie, Laurie Anderson and Devo’s Mark Mothersbaugh, among many others.
In conjunction with Nam June Paik, SFMOMA will present Paik’s work Video Commune online. Originally broadcast on live TV in 1970, Video Commune was an improvised montage of distorted TV imagery accompanied by songs by the Beatles. At the time, Paik invited random passersby into the studio and let them remix video images as they aired. The presentation in the exhibition galleries is a condensed videotape of the broadcast filmed from a TV screen.
Nam June Paik
Still from Video Commune: Beatles from Beginning to End 1970
Video, colour, sound
240 min
© Nam June Paik Estate
Still from Video Commune: Beatles from Beginning to End 1970
Video, colour, sound
240 min
© Nam June Paik Estate
Video Commune will be made accessible as a participatory work on SFMOMA’s Nam June Paik exhibition webpage: visitors to the webpage will be invited to watch the silent video from the comfort of their home and create a soundtrack of their choice from a selection of Beatles songs. A second video, Electronic Opera #1, combines abstract electronic patterns with an invitation to the audience to close and open their eyes.
Virtual Public Programs
SFMOMA is proud to present the online film series Dances for Camera: Nam June Paik, Merce Cunningham, Charles Atlas on the museum website from June through August. Dances for Camera features three key works from 1960s San Francisco, 1970s New York, and 1980s London that exemplify the dance film genre. In addition, SFMOMA will host a virtual public performance and streaming program in collaboration with the National Gallery Singapore on September 24.
Catalogue
The exhibition is accompanied by an illustrated catalogue from Tate Publishing. Edited by Sook-Kyung Lee and Rudolf Frieling, it features essays by the editors and contributions from Leontine Coelewij, Grace Deveney, Rachel Jans, Susanne Neuburger, Andrea Nitsche-Krupp, Valentina Ravaglia and David Toop, as well as excerpts of Paik’s own writings.
Venues + Dates
Tate Modern: October 17, 2019–February 9, 2020
Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam: March 14–October 4, 2020
SFMOMA: May 8–October 3, 2021
National Gallery Singapore: December 2021–March 2022
Virtual Public Programs
SFMOMA is proud to present the online film series Dances for Camera: Nam June Paik, Merce Cunningham, Charles Atlas on the museum website from June through August. Dances for Camera features three key works from 1960s San Francisco, 1970s New York, and 1980s London that exemplify the dance film genre. In addition, SFMOMA will host a virtual public performance and streaming program in collaboration with the National Gallery Singapore on September 24.
Catalogue
The exhibition is accompanied by an illustrated catalogue from Tate Publishing. Edited by Sook-Kyung Lee and Rudolf Frieling, it features essays by the editors and contributions from Leontine Coelewij, Grace Deveney, Rachel Jans, Susanne Neuburger, Andrea Nitsche-Krupp, Valentina Ravaglia and David Toop, as well as excerpts of Paik’s own writings.
Venues + Dates
Tate Modern: October 17, 2019–February 9, 2020
Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam: March 14–October 4, 2020
SFMOMA: May 8–October 3, 2021
National Gallery Singapore: December 2021–March 2022
Viewfinder links:
YouTube links:
Styrous® ~ Saturday, May 15, 2021
February 18, 2018
June 4, 2014
The Styrous Viewfinder at 5
Today is the fifth anniversary of the Viewfinder. When I started this blog I never dreamed I'd be at it all these many years.
I used to write a monthly newsletter for the San Francisco Fashion Forum in the '90's called the Fashion Forum News which covered things fashion and art related; so, this blog is, I suppose, an online extension of it separated by twenty years or so.
It's been a long journey since my first entry in The Viewfinder, Robert Frank at SFMOMA,
on June 4th, 2009, exactly five years ago today. I had no intention of going
to many of the places I have in the blog; they just seemed appropriate
at the moment. And that's been my modus operandi;
writing about what interests me at the moment. However, none of the
blog entries have been written 'spur of the moment'. Each and every one has been carefully thought out and researched; each has links to more info if one is interested in knowing more. I've throughly enjoyed the researching as I have learned an enormous amount of 'stuff' in the process; some of it useful, some of it not, all of it interesting.
When I started the Viewfinder, its focus was to be about photography with some art thrown in. Then music
and fashion entered; things Ive been involved with professionally. It
has kind of branched out from there and one might even say it's gotten
out of hand. Well, that's the way it's developed and there's nothing to do about it now except enjoy it for what it's worth.
The Viewfinder has also turned out to be tiny glimpses of my life. I didn't intend that either, it just kind of happened; my life was a part of the subject written about. These glimpses are sporadic, not in any kind of order and definitely NOT chronological. It reminds me of the journeys/adventures of the character, Billy Pilgrim, in the Kurt Vonnegut novel, Slaughterhouse-Five. It randomly bounces around from one time/place/event to another.
I don't have any children (at least none I am aware of) to pass along stories of the crazy and the not-so-crazy times or the people and events in my life; so, this is it. They say before you die your life flashes before you in an instant. Well, I've had the fantastic luxury of the flashing happening for five years so far and I love it. I've remembered some of those people, places and events; sparkling and beautiful gems that have brightened my life as I've traveled down its road. Writing about them has brought them back to life and they now live on through this blog.
The Viewfinder has also turned out to be tiny glimpses of my life. I didn't intend that either, it just kind of happened; my life was a part of the subject written about. These glimpses are sporadic, not in any kind of order and definitely NOT chronological. It reminds me of the journeys/adventures of the character, Billy Pilgrim, in the Kurt Vonnegut novel, Slaughterhouse-Five. It randomly bounces around from one time/place/event to another.
I don't have any children (at least none I am aware of) to pass along stories of the crazy and the not-so-crazy times or the people and events in my life; so, this is it. They say before you die your life flashes before you in an instant. Well, I've had the fantastic luxury of the flashing happening for five years so far and I love it. I've remembered some of those people, places and events; sparkling and beautiful gems that have brightened my life as I've traveled down its road. Writing about them has brought them back to life and they now live on through this blog.
I can hardly wait to see what the next five years will bring as I am having the time of my life on my very own Magical Mystery Tour.
Come, join me on the journey.
July 25, 2012
Art/Exhibitions
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Naturhistorisches Museum, Vienna, Austria
photo by
Andra Norris Gallery ~ Metamorphosis
Suzy Barnard ~ Uncharted Waters
Berkeley Art Museum exhibitions/events
Body as Agent: Changing Fashion Art
Edythe Boone ~ "Let a Thousand Parks Bloom"
ButohDrawing articles
Canapo Art Gallery ~ Latin artists showcase
Chime In ~ Making Light in Tbilisi
The art of Lon Clark, Jr.
Betty Jo Costanzo
Dazzle ships, Vorticist art & BLAST
Philip Dow ~ Sphere of Influence
Ecotopia: The Installations of Celeste Connor
Edith Piaf á la Bibliothèque nationale de France
ROBERT FRANK: THE AMERICANS AT SFMOMA
Gray Loft Gallery exhibitions
Gray Loft Gallery ~ Oakland Magazine Best Art Gallery Award 2016
Ake & Leslie Frierman Grunditz
Illuminating Shadows @ Frisbie
4th Annual International Color Awards ~ Abstract winners
Island Alliance of the Arts
Island City Waterways ~ Ginny Parsons, Pons Maar & Marc Ribaud
Jingletown Art
Pearl Jones-Tranter @ Caffe 817
V. Silva ~ Oaxaca ceramic platter
Tracey Snelling
Styrous®
Tom White
John Wood ~ Look Again @ the LuckyLo Art Gallery & Boutique
June 4, 2009
ROBERT FRANK: THE AMERICANS AT SFMOMA
Robert Frank, Chattanooga, Tennessee, 1955; gelatin silver print; 8 3/16 x 11 5/8 in.; Private collection; © Robert Frank
An exhibition of major importance has opened at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA). The exhibition entitled, Looking In: Robert Frank’s The Americans, organized by the National Gallery of Art, Washington, will be on display until August 23, 2009.
This is the extraordinary photography Frank produced from 1955 – 1956 when he spent nine months traveling across the United States. During this journey he took more than 27,000 images that he edited down to 1,000 work prints. He spent a year editing, and sequencing the photographs, then linking them thematically, conceptually, formally, emotionally and linguistically. The result was The Americans, a series of photographs that looked beneath the surface of life in the United States to reveal a culture on the brink of massive social upheaval and revealed a country that many knew existed but few acknowledged. A book of these photographs was first published in France in 1958 then in the United States in 1959.
Looking In: Robert Frank’s The Americans is grouped into four sections. The first examines the roots of The Americans, not only in Frank’s earlier handmade books, which include 40 Fotos (1946), Peru (1949), and Black White and Things (1952), but also in other sequences of photographs he made at this time, such as People You Don’t See (1952).
The second section displays Frank’s original application to the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial (which funded the primary work on The Americans project), along with vintage contact sheets, letters to photographer Walker Evans and author Jack Kerouac, and two early manuscript versions of Kerouac’s introduction to the book. Also exhibited are three collages (made from more than 115 original rough work prints) that were assembled under Frank’s supervision in 2007 and 2008, revealing his intended themes as well as his first rounds of images selection. Assisting him with these collages was Sarah Greenough who co-curated the show with Cory Keller (SFMOMA Associate Curator).
The third section is composed of all 83 images from The Americans in their original sequence, often in the form of rarely exhibited vintage prints. These images changed the course of twentieth-century photography, and helped the nation see itself more clearly. The images showed a people plagued by racism, ill-served by politicians, and numbed by a rapidly rising culture of consumption. But in addition to exposing a darker side of the United States, Frank shed light on the beauty of overlooked corners of the country. His photographs of diners, cars, and even “the road” itself, helped to redefine the icons of America. These 83 provocative but often poignant photographs reveal “the kind of civilization born here and spreading elsewhere”. Often paired, they address urban and rural, black and white, military, political and civilian, rich, poor and middle class people and life. These pairings suggest the divisions that separate people and the ways in which some see but cannot act, while others act but cannot see.
The fourth section addresses the impact that The Americans had on Frank’s subsequent career and includes a film Frank made in 2008 especially for this exhibition. Released at the height of the Cold War, The Americans was initially reviled, even decried as anti-American. Yet during the 1960’s many of the issues that Frank had addressed erupted into the collective consciousness, especially the pervasive racism in the country, the alienation of youth, a growing dissatisfaction of political leaders, and skepticism about the rising consumer culture. The book came to be regarded as both prescient and revolutionary. It soon attracted a cult-like following that included many photographers and other artists.
Looking In: Robert Frank’s The Americans is accompanied by a major publication of the same name. Published by The National Gallery of Art with assistance from The Getty Foundation, the softcover edition of the catalogue ($45) includes reproductions of all the work in the exhibition, 396 pages with 6 four-color, 168 tritone and 210 duotone images. The hard-cover ($75) is an expanded edition of 528 pages which add the contact sheets for images in The Americans, a chronology, a map, and two appendices. For more information visit the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.
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