Exhibition view

National Art Museum of Ukraine
Assistance Development Foundation of the National Art Museum of Ukraine

Beuys. Paik. Vostell. Art of Action and Video art of the 1960’s-1970’s
5 November – 12 December 2010
Curator: Daryna Yakimova

  The project is realized within the Gethe Institute program for heightening qualification of cultural managers in Eastern Europe and Central Asia. Project of the initiative “Culture and Development”
 National Art Museum of Ukraine in the new season continues to demonstrate projects, dedicated to the world and Ukrainian media art. The Museum opens the exhibition, which presents to the wide audience works from the “golden funds” of the world museum and private collections of conceptual art of the 1960’s and 1970’s.
  At the exhibition are demonstrated classical works of such pioneers of video art as Nam June Paik and Wolf Vostell, as well as documentation on performances and happenings of the lead of European action art Joseph Beuys. Nam June Paik is presented by his first video, which he made soon after buying his first video camera Sony Portapak, BUTTON HAPPENING (1965) and which marked the beginning of video art (this video has been found and restored recently), and also by the video GLOBAL GROOVE (1975).ф
  SUN IN YOUR HEAD (1963) is one of the first in Europe (Germany) video experiments of the German intellectual, actionist and video artist Wolf Vostell.
   FILZ TV (1970), I LIKE AMERICA AND AMERICA LIKES ME (1974) are video documentations of Joseph Beuys’s performances.
  As a new type of art, media art has started to develop rapidly more than 45 years ago. Domination of the mass media in human life worked as a catalyst for the artistic interest in the new technologies. In the 1960’s TV played crucial role in forming of the artistic world-view; for instance, in USA and Germany it occupied virtually central place in human life, “ousting piano as a piece of sitting room’s furniture, where all family used to gather around”. Artists realized importance of the phenomenon of electronic mass media and of society, which the latest have created, and started to use it in their art. As one of the important influences on an artist of the 1960’s media theorist Bertha Sichel mentions performance, which had been known long before the TV. But only in the 1960’s performance became a full-fledged artistic method.
  Video art was invented by the German artist Wolf Vostell and his Korean colleague Nam June Paik, who studied electronic music in Germany. These artists were the first, who started to film performances and happenings, thus introducing video into the context of contemporary art.
  The project is created with the assistance of the Foundation of Joseph Beuys, Wolf Vostell and Nam June Paik.

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