NAM J U N E PAI K ’S

T V B UDDHA AS B U D D H I ST A RT

WALTE R S M ITH
Mississippi State University

O
f the numerous artists working today from the vantage point of
interculturalism — not only borrowing motifs and ideas from any
number of cultures outside their own, but also living and working within
these cultures — Nam June Paik is surely a quintessential figure. Born and
raised in Korea, trained in Japan and in Europe, living and working in the
United States, Paik is perhaps the embodiment of “interculturalism.”
Despite this, and despite the fact that Asian imagery regularly crops up in
his work, most critics discuss Paik primarily in reference to Western
constructs and Western traditions. Regularly evoked are Paik’s primary
mentors — Marcel Duchamp, Marshal McLuhan, Buckminster Fuller and
John Cage. Paik’s Eastern roots are frequently touched upon, but rarely
more than that. Aside from brief references to Zen Buddhism, an interest
thought to be received via the influence of John Cage, critics and scholars
have been very reticent, vague, or cryptic when discussing Asian ideas and
im agery in Paik’s work.1 Very possibly, it is Western critics’ ignorance of
Eastern traditions that is responsible for this gap. My contention, however,
is that knowledge of such traditions is essential for the interpretation, not
only of Paik’s work, but that of all artists whose work constitutes a response
to Asian art, philosophy, or culture.
One of Paik’s most evocative, and I would argue “Eastern” works, is TV
Buddha, of 1974 (fig. 1). Despite the obvious Asian im agery, this work
(along with its many variants) has really never been discussed as Buddhist
art. And yet it can be argued, on the basis of comparisons with classical
Buddhist art, that a complex theological and metaphysical construct is
alluded to, even if subconsciously, in TV Buddha.
The basic set up is extremely simple — a statue of the Buddha placed
before a video monitor. Embedded within an earthen mound, the monitor
bears the Buddha’s own image, which is being transmitted to the monitor
by a camera placed behind the mound. Paik has done a number of varia-
tions on this work. One, of 1974, has the image sitting before a freestand-
ing portable TV set. And in Video Buddha (1989), the TV monitor is
encased in a layer of bronze.2 The basic set up of all three works is similar,
but the one illustrated in figure 1 has the greatest poetic resonance —

R E LIG I O N and the A RT S 4:3 (2000): 359-373. © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden
 R E LIG IO N and the A RTS

1. Nam June Paik. TV Buddha, 1974. Exhibition installation, Nam June

Paik (30 April -27 June, 1982), Whitney Museum of American Art.

perhaps because of the quality of the Buddha image, but also because of the
mound, which, as I hope to show later, bears specific symbolic references as
well.
Before presenting my own interpretation, it will be useful to summarize
what other scholars and critics have said about TV Buddha. I do not intend
to argue that these scholars interpretations are wrong. I would say, however,
that a certain dimension is missing, which can be filled in with a fuller con-
sideration of the Asian content of the work.
An overview of the literature on Paik shows that while many critics con-
sider TV Buddha to be one of his most engaging and significant pieces, the
actual com mentary on it is surprisingly sparse. In his 1982 Whitney
M useum catalog, John Hanhardt states, “. . . the Buddha contemplates
itself, a self-portrait, which fulfills a meditative stare inward to the self,” and
that the work “explores visual puns and ideas that remind one of
Duchamp’s playful seriousness.” 3 A 1995 article by Patricia Mellencamp has
a somewhat longer discussion of Asian content in Paik’s work, focusing on
Zen Buddhism. She begins by stating in another way what I have stated
earlier regarding Western critics’ assessments of Paik’s work, that “while a

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 Walter Smith

nod is often made to the premises of Eastern philosophical and spiritual

beliefs, the story is set within Western art and thought.” She also notes that
references to epiphanies and transcendence are often tossed off rather glibly
by critics who do not really understand “the rigorous discipline (and years)
it takes” to achieve such transcendence. Leading up to a reference to TV
Buddha, she states: “Truth and meaning can be found in silence and under-
stood through experience. This meaning comes, not from the outside, from
works, but from within.” 4
While acknowledging a Buddhist philosophical basis to the work and
chiding other critics for their trivialization of Buddhist concepts like
“enlightenment” and “transcendence,” Mellencamp nonetheless presents a
rather open-ended interpretation, and her statement that the meaning of
the work comes from inner experience is at best, vague.
Another Zen-based interpretation is given by Edith Decker, in an essay
of 1993. To begin with, Decker makes the interesting statement that Paik
originally intended simply to “place a Buddha statue in front of a switched-
on television as a spectator,” but ultimately decided on the now familiar set-
up. Decker finds the final result ambiguous and ironic. She states: “The
Buddha, who wishes to keep himself free of all external impressions in mys-
tic contemplation, now sits confronted by his own im age. . . . In zazen,
(which is) concentrated, motionless sitting in front of a wall, the intention
is to suppress the ego to enable unity with cosmic energy, but TV Buddha
represents a superficialization of this principle of self-confrontation. The
artist’s Buddhist origins show on a number of levels in this work; rooted in
the Zen tradition he formulates a visual koan.” 5
Decker does not give us a verbal version of this koan, nor does she state
how beyond the basic imagery, the artist’s Buddhist origins show here.
What Decker does show is a lack of specific knowledge of the meanings
im posed upon the Buddha image itself within the tradition of Buddhism
itself, knowledge that would wipe away much of the ambiguity Decker
senses. To return briefly to the “visual koan” idea, my assumption of how
Decker’s verbal version would read is in the form of a question: “Why does
the Buddha contemplate his own image?” Awareness of basic Buddhist
symbolism makes the answer obvious, in that the meditating Buddha image
itself represents nirvana, or enlightenment.6 This transcendent, indefinable
state is to be identified with the Buddha himself. And so, the Buddha con-
templating himself is contemplating, or absorbed within, his own nirvana.
We see, then, not a confrontation, but a straightforward, if startlingly
modernized, statement of a basic Buddhist truth.
The assessments of Hanhardt, Mellencamp and Decker are all brief

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references constituting no more than a paragraph embedded within general

essays on Paik’s work. In this they are representative of most of the com-
mentary on TV Buddha. A much longer study, focused entirely on TV
Buddha, was published in 1986 by Philippe Sohet.7 It contains not a single
reference to Buddhism as such, making instead a variety of observations on
the work. First, Sohet sees TV Buddha as somewhat “autobiographical,”
representing, as does Paik himself, a blending or confrontation of Eastern
tradition and Western technology. What Sohet dwells on, however, is the
play between illusion and reality in this work. For Sohet, the installation
only apparently constructs an apparatus whereby the object is doubled by
its image, since the monitor shows only a spectral reflection of an object the
viewer sees already.8 And, noting that with eyes half-closed in meditation,
the image and its “double” never really look at one another, Sohet states:
“par le jeu de ces regards irréconciliables, en perpétuelle fuite l’un de l’autre,
ce qui se trahit et que dénonce l’installation, c’est précisément, l’illusion du
double, la non-clôtre d’un circuit vidéo, pourtant fermé.” 9 Sohet discusses
at length this notion of “non-closure,” which is intensified by the “irrecon-
cilable tension of a living image” (this being for Sohet the transmitted
image, “live” on screen), and one that is fixed and immutable (the statue of
the Buddha). 10 Sohet sees all this as indicative of a narcissistic vision which,
initiated by Paik, pervades the contemporary art scene, as in the work of
Vito Acconci particularly.
Sohet’s elaborately conceived semiotic interpretation is inventive yet
contrived. In this, it is interesting to read what Paik himself has to say about
semiotics. In a 1995 interview Paik states, “I don’t understand semiotics,”
adding that he didn’t get much out of his limited reading on the subject.11
Whether this can be taken as a green light to dismiss most of Sohet’s obser-
vations and replace them with Buddhistic ones is certainly open to debate.
Paik seems to be more sympathetic to Buddhism than to semiotics, but he
is not a practicing Buddhist, nor is he a scholar of Buddhism. Once, when
asked point blank if he were a Buddhist, Paik replied: “No, I’m an artist. . .
Because I am a friend of John Cage, people tend to see me as a Zen monk
. . . I’m not a follower of Zen but I react to Zen in the same way as I react
to Johann Sebastian Bach.” 12 Assuming that Paik reacts not only to Zen, but
to Buddhism in general this way, I will now offer some observations and
suggestions of my own.
First of all, among the various Zen aspects of TV Buddha, the use of
humor should also be included. The inherent humor of something so
solemn and serious as a Buddha image watching himself on television, is
perhaps too obvious even to mention. In past centuries Zen artists

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 Walter Smith
2. Hakuin Ekaku. One Hand
Clapping, 1766. Ink on paper.
Private Collection. From P.
Mason, History of Japanese Art
(New York: Abrams, 1993).
frequently used humor to bring the
Buddha down to earth, or to catch the
viewer/spiritual aspirant off guard, in
order to jolt him/her towards en-
lightenment. The eighteenth-century
Japanese Zen-master Hakuin, for exam-
ple, often imposed his own roly-poly
image onto that of Buddhist divinities,
giving the images a new lighthearted-
ness, but also driving home the all-per-
vasiveness of the Buddha-nature (fig.
2). Another link with Hakuin is that
both he and Paik are “modernizers” of
Buddhist art, using media and tech-
niques of their own times to transform
traditional iconography — a folk style of
ink painting on the one hand, and
video on the other.
There are other aspec ts of
Buddhism aside from Zen, however,
that as an East Asian Paik would have
at least passing familiarity. Of crucial
importance, I would suggest, are im ages
which show two Buddhas together. A
sixth-century A D C hinese bronze
image shows the historical Buddha,
usually called Gautama or Shakyamuni,
and a great Buddha of the distant past,
Prabhutaratna (fig. 3). The image refers
to a key event in an im portant
Buddhist text, the Lotus Sutra. This
sutra was composed in India, and trans-
lated into Chinese by the second cen-
tury AD. 13 The text narrates that
Gautama, a historical personage who
lived in the sixth century BC, has just
preached a new doctrine in which he
reveals that the Buddha-nature is tran-
scendent and eternal, and that he,
Gautama, is only one manifestation of
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3. The Buddhas Gautama and Prabhutaratna, dated 518 AD.

Bronze Musée Guimet, Paris.

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 Walter Smith

this subtle, transcendent being. As a testament to the truth of this new doc-
trine Prabhutaratna appears. Prabhutaratna, who lived in a distant past age,
has been in the state of highest enlightenment, a state beyond perception
and non-perception, for hundreds of thousands of years. Before his death,
however, he made a vow that he would appear in the world each time the
doctrine of the Lotus Sutra was taught. In age after age, with the appearance
of each historical Buddha, he has fulfilled this promise. Here, then, after
Prabhutaratna proclaims the truth of Gautama’s teaching, the two Buddhas
engage in philosophical discourse. Very significant is the idea that the Lotus
Sutra is taught by each historical Buddha, repeated throughout each world-
age. Its doctrine, then, is an eternal truth, not just the teaching of a partic-
ular individual in time. The actual appearance of the two Buddha’s together
is significant too. It shows that the Buddhas of the past and present are co-
eternal, and symbolizes as well their mystical unity.
A notable aspect of Paik’s work is that the TV monitor is im bedded in
an earthen mound. This mound is very similar in form to a stupa, which
along with the Buddha image itself, is one of the most important visual
forms in Buddhism. Early stupas from India are essentially monumentalized

4. Stupa #1, Sanchi, India, ca. 100 B .C.

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5. The Buddhas Gautama and Prabhutaratna. Ming Period (1368-1644).

Engraving. From L. Frederic, Buddhism, Flammarion Iconographic Guides
(New York: Flammarion, 1995).

grave mounds, and allude to the type of grave monument in which the
Buddha’s ashes were originally interred (fig. 4). As a grave mound the stupa
symbolizes the death of the Buddha, but more importantly it signals his
com plete release from the seemingly endless round of births and deaths,
because when a Buddha, a fully enlightened being dies, he will never be re-
born again. The stupa then comes to be identified with this ultimate and
transcendent state.14 The importance of this within the present discussion
is that in the Lotus Sutra, when Prabhutaratna appears to Gautama, he
appears seated within a resplendent and light-filled stupa. This is illustrated

366
 Walter Smith
6. Buddhist Stele, Northern Qi Dynasty
(550-577). Limestone. The Nelson-
Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City
M O (Purchase: Nelson Trust).
367
clearly in a sixteenth-century
Chinese engraving (fig. 5).
The same imagery is present-
ed in a sixth-century stele
from China showing a stand-
ing Buddha figure (fig. 6).
Above him, at the summit of
a stylized mountain, is again
the representation of a stupa,
here taking on its Chinese
form as a pagoda. That
Prabhutaratna is conceived as
being within this stupa is clear
from the back of the stele (fig.
7), where he is shown seated
within the stupa, with
Gautama Buddha seated
below. The juxtaposition of
Buddha images and stupas is
found frequently in Buddhist
art, as a fifth-century temple-
image from India shows (fig.
8). Numerous additional
examples could be men-
tioned. I cite this last work to
emphasize the clear relation-
ship of Paik’s mound to a
stupa, and hope that such a
reading seems more apt than
that of Philippe Sohet, who
finds the ensemble of mound
and TV monitor curiously
analogous to an eye.15 But if
the mound can be related to
independent images of the
Buddha enshrined within a
stupa, the B uddhist w orks
illustrating the Lotus Sutra
provide an even closer analo-
gy to TV Buddha as a whole.
 R E LIG IO N and the A RTS

7. Buddhist Stele (reverse of figure 6, with the Buddhas Gautama and

Prabhutaratna). The Nelson-Atkins M useum of Art, Kansas City M O
(Purchase: Nelson Trust).

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 Walter Smith

8. Buddha Enshrined within a Stupa, Ajanta, India, Fifth Century AD.

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9. TV Buddha Reincarnated, 1994. Courtesy Carl Solway Gallery,

Cincinnati O H. Photographer: Tom Allisson.

Aside from visual similarity, there is a philosophical appropriateness in

connecting TV Buddha to the Lotus Sutra. At the crux of the Lotus Sutra’s
doctrine is that all Buddhas, past and present, are co-eternal, and partake
of the same essential nature. The same can be said, on a symbolic level, of
the statue and the video image. Both Buddhas have always existed togeth-
er in eternity — the statue and the video image simply make their presence
known. It might be objected that the video image is an illusion, dependent
for its existence on the three-dimensional figure. But in the Buddhist world
view, all material existence is illusory, and so the solid statue is no more real
— or unreal — than the flickering video image.16
My interpretation of these two eternal Buddhas conversing with one
another might be countered by Philippe Sohet’s observation cited earlier,
that the two Buddhas’ gazes never really meet, and perpetually sidestep one
another. A solution to this problem can be seen in one of Paik’s most recent
variations on this theme, a work entitled TV Buddha Reincarnated, of 1994
(fig. 9). Here the Buddha, teleconferencing with himself,17 evokes in new
ways the Lotus Sutra’s theme of mystical dialogue.

370
 Walter Smith

A final question to be considered in conclusion is “how closely does

this Buddhist interpretation correspond with the artist’s own intentions?”
Various inquiries to the artist himself on this point went unanswered. But
verification from the artist is not necessarily required for this interpretation
to be valid. The critic Wulf Herzogenrath, writing about symbolism in
Paik’s work states that “Paik himself is silent on the subject.” Herzogenrath
goes on to say, however, that “Paik likes multiple interpretations and analy-
ses. For [Paik] the acquisition of a work of art by the viewer is a com po-
nent of the work. He consciously continues to revive this Fluxus
tradition.” 18 This sentiment is echoed in the philosophy of M arcel
Duchamp as well, one of Paik’s mentors. According to Duchamp, the artist
“is a ‘mediumistic being’ who does not really know what he is doing or why
he is doing it. It is the spectator who deciphers and interprets the work’s
inner qualifications, relates them to the external world, and thus completes
the creative cycle.” 19 I make these citations in part to justify what may seem
a very personal interpretation. But these statements also show that Paik
himself advocates a broad frame of reference in the interpretation of his
work, one that should certainly include a deeper consideration of Asian art
and thought than has previously occurred. In this way, critics themselves
will become more truly intercultural, in their interpretive approaches to
recent art.

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N OTE S

1 A key reference work with an extensive bibliography is Nam June Paik:

Video Time-Video Space, ed. Stooss and Kellein.
2 For illustrations of these works see Stoos and Kellein 63, 127.
3 John G . Hanhardt, Nam June Paik 98.
4 Patricia Mellencamp, “The Old and the New: Nam June Paik” 43.
5 Edith Decker, “Hardware,” in Stooss and Kellein 68. A nd this is the way,
she believes, that meaning is expressed in TV Budda.
6 Walter Smith, “Narrative as Icon” 5.
7 Phillippe Sohet, “TV-Buddha/ Paik: l’alchimie narcissique” h-h-6.
8 Sohet, “TV-Buddha/ Paik” h-3.
9 Sohet, “TV-Buddha/ Paik” h-4 (“by the play of these irreconcilable gazes, in
perpetual flight from one another, what the installation reveals is precisely
the illusion of the double, the non-closure of the video cirecuit, however
closed”).
10 Sohet, “TV-Buddha/Paik” h-4. To qoote Sohet’s original French: “Cette
statue figée, immuable, dievient par la magie du circuit direct, ‘live,’ une
im ag e vivante, perpétu ellem ent rec onduite par le balayag e de c es m illiers
de points électroniques” (“This fixed, im m utable statue becom es by the
m ag ic of direct c ircuit, ‘live,’ a living im age, perpetually reconducted by
the scanning of th ousands of elec tronic im pulses”).
11 Nicolas Zurbrugg, “N am June Paik: A n Interview ” 126.
12 M ellenc am p, “T he O ld and th e N ew” 44 (c iting N am June Paik,
“Interview , 1992,” H 171).
13 Fo r a translation see Kato and Sooth ill.
14 See Jorinde Ebert, “Parinirvana and Stu pa” 220 ff.
15 Sohet, “T V - Buddha/ Paik” h-2 (“. . . curieuse analogie m orphologique
avec l’oeil”).
16 This study w as origin ally presented as a paper at the annual m eeting of
the Southeast C olleg e A rt C onferenc e, M iam i Beach, Florida, in
Oc to ber 1998. In am plifying aspects of m y in terpretation, m em bers of
the audienc e had various in sights as to how the cam era c ould be inter-
preted Buddhistic ally, and I ow e a heartfelt thanks to their stim ulating
and encouraging w ords. W hen one person took up th e issue of the
videocam era indeed being the c reator of an illusion of the Buddha on
the TV screen, another sugg ested that th e c am era c ould itself be seen as
equivalent to the Buddha, dem aterialized, but necessarily attached. In
this it serves as a vehicle of transm ission – or of transform ation – effec t-
ing th e visible m anifestation of the eternal Buddha-n ature in tw o form s.
In th is w ay, the statu e and th e video-im age are equally valid representa-
tions of th e Buddha, th at is, the vid eo-im age is not m erely a “reproduc-
tion” of the statu e.

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17 See The Electronic Super H ighw ay: N am June Paik in the ’90s. Videotape
(C incin nati O H : C arl Solw ay G allery, n.d . [ca. 1996]).
18 Wulf H erzogenrath, “Fire – Earth – Water – A ir: The Four Elem ents of
Paik’s Work,” in Sto oss and Kellein 99.
19 C ited in C alvin Tom kins, Th e Bride and the Bachelors 9.

W O RK C ITE D

Ebert, Jorinde. “Parinirvana and Stupa.” The Stupa: Its Religious, Historical and
Architectur al Significance. Ed. A . L. Dallapiccola. Wiesbaden Germany:
Steiner, 1979. 219-228.
Hanhardt, John G . Nam June Paik. New York: Whitney M useum of American Art,
1982.
Kato, Bunno and William Edward Soothill. Trans. The Threefold Lotus Sutra:
Innumerable Meanings. The Lotus Flower of the Wonderful Law, and
Meditation on the Bodhisattva Universal Virtue. Tokyo and New York:
Weatherhill, 1975.
M ellencamp, Patricia. “The Old and the New: Nam June Paik.” Art Journal 54.4
(Winter 1995): 41-47.
Paik, Nam June. “Interview 1992.” Interview by Otto Hahn. In Nam June Paik: eine
DATA base: la Biennale di Venezia XLV, esposizione internazionale d’arte.
13.6.-10.10.1993 . Catalogue, ed. Klaus Bussmann and Florian M atzner.
Stuttgart Germany: Edition Cantz, c. 1993.
Smith, Walter, “N arrative as Icon in the Art of Amaravati and Nagarjunakonda.”
Journal of the Indian Society of Oriental Art n.s. 20/21 (1991-93): 5-8.
Sohet, Phillippe. “TV-Buddha/ Paik: l’alchimie narcissique.” Degrés: Revue de syn-
thèse à orientation sémiologique 48 (Winter 1986): h-h-6.
Stooss, Toni, and Thomas Kellein, eds. Nam June Paik: Video Time – Video Space.
New York: Viking Press, 1968.
Tomkins, C alvin. The Bride and the Bachelors: Five Masters of the Avant Garde. New
York: Viking Press, 1968.
Zurbrugg, Nicholas. “N am June Paik: An Interview.” Visible Language 29.2 (1995):
124-137.

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