Untitled 1975

Nam June Paik created this untitled drawing on graph paper, sometime in his life, using just a pen. You can see how the ink bleeds slightly into the paper's fibers, giving it a soft, fuzzy edge, like a memory. I can imagine Paik, maybe on a train or in a meeting, doodling these images. It's like he's thinking with his hand, letting the pen wander across the grid, searching for a form. The repeated image of a screen, a mountain, and the sun makes me wonder what it might have been like to sit with him and watch his imagination at work, riffing on screens and nature, trying to capture the ephemeral quality of technology. It’s like a visual poem, concise and full of potential energy, a reminder that art can be found in the simplest of gestures. It’s hard not to think about other artists who use drawing in this way, from Cy Twombly’s scribbles to Agnes Martin’s subtle grids; artists are always in conversation, aren't they?