Marat, from the portfolio Evolution/Revolution/Resolution

Regarded as the founder of video art, Nam June Paik incorporated televisions and electronic devices into his artistic vision early in his career. A recurring theme in his work is the interdependent yet antagonistic relationship between modern technology and humanity, symbolized by robotic figures often constructed from televisions, radios, and other electronic equipment.

For the 1989 bicentennial of the French Revolution, the Museum of Modern Art in Paris commissioned Paik to create a series inspired by revolutionary leaders, their lives encapsulated within the artist’s signature robots. This print references Jean-Paul Marat (1743–1793), each screen a set of Paik’s multilingual thoughts and associations with the radical thinker’s writings, life, and death. Prominent at the left are the Chinese characters for “assassination” (ànshā 暗殺), and on the right and center are sketches based on Jacques-Louis David’s iconic painting of Marat dead in his bathtub, La Mort de Marat (The Death of Marat).