Charlie Chaplin
Date/ 2001
Artist(Credit Line)/ Nam June Paik
Classification/ Sculpture
Nam June Paik, Charlie Chaplin
Dimensions / 185x152x56cm
Medium / 4 CRT TVs, 4 radio’s cases, 1 LCD monitors, 2 bulbs, 1-channel video, color, silent
With movies such as The Gold Rush, Modern Times and The Great Dictator, Charlie Chaplin as a comic actor and a movie director continuously commented on the issue of recovering humanity in the age of materialism. In his masterpiece Modern Times, he depicted a society dominated by capitalism and machine civilization, and criticized the loss of humanity in his typical way of lyrical satire. Paik was also preoccupied with the issues of humanized technology and the harmony of humans and technologies, and so it is no wonder that Paik represented Chaplin in his robot sculpture. The body of Charlie Chaplin is composed of a vintage monitor, old televisions and radios, and the bulbs reminiscent of gas lamps in Chaplin’s films are its two hands, which has an old-world atmosphere delivering nostalgia for the era of black and white films. Five monitors show the edited scenes from Chaplin’s movies.
Medium / 4 CRT TVs, 4 radio’s cases, 1 LCD monitors, 2 bulbs, 1-channel video, color, silent
With movies such as The Gold Rush, Modern Times and The Great Dictator, Charlie Chaplin as a comic actor and a movie director continuously commented on the issue of recovering humanity in the age of materialism. In his masterpiece Modern Times, he depicted a society dominated by capitalism and machine civilization, and criticized the loss of humanity in his typical way of lyrical satire. Paik was also preoccupied with the issues of humanized technology and the harmony of humans and technologies, and so it is no wonder that Paik represented Chaplin in his robot sculpture. The body of Charlie Chaplin is composed of a vintage monitor, old televisions and radios, and the bulbs reminiscent of gas lamps in Chaplin’s films are its two hands, which has an old-world atmosphere delivering nostalgia for the era of black and white films. Five monitors show the edited scenes from Chaplin’s movies.
