Mellencamp goes on to say - and Smith clearly relates to this - that many critics did not (and do not) understand the "rigorous discipline (and years) it takes" to achieve the transcendence that Paik has achieved. "Truth and meaning can be found in silence and understood through experience," Mellencamp writes (and Smith quotes) on page 361 of the journal article.

Yet another critique of the TV Buddha was published in 1986 by Philippe Sohet, who sees the TV Buddha as "autobiographical" and represents to Sohet "a blending or confrontation of Eastern tradition and Western technology," Smith explains. But that's where Smith's acceptance of Sohet's interpretation of the Buddha ends; from there, Sohet's spin is "inventive yet contrived," because Sohet believes the tension of a living live image of the Buddha, that is "fixed and immutable" is shallow. The Buddha and the video camera "never really look at one another" in Sohet's opinion, who forms that opinion because the Buddha's eyes are half open (he is meditating).

Smith also writes that in addition to the Buddha, and the whole dramatic theme, the mound in which the video monitor is embedded also "...bears specific symbolic references." That is because the mound is like a "supa" - which is a grave mound and similar to the place where Buddha's ashes were originally interred. Smith believes that much of Pait's work is underappreciated for its spiritual value, and lauded only because it is art that shocks the senses.

Another article on Paik's work is found in the Afterimage journal...

The answer may not be forthcoming, especially now that Paik is gone; but Green suspects that Paik had grown weary of being criticized for his socially progressive work and hence, had decided to work "outside the system" rather than inside.
The criticism that Paik had received - though sometimes unfair - was not all unjustified, Green writes. Paik had "utopian ideas about humanizing technology," but those ideas had "no chance of describing, much less affecting, the power imbalances that create and administer that technology." Some of Paik's work was "messy," Green asserts, and while Paik did indeed create "visions of creativity and zones of liberation" in his blending of technology and art, Green adds that those achievements of Paik were a "triumph of the merest survival, not a triumph for the progress of mankind toward a better system."

Works Cited

Green, Ronald J. 1996. At the Crossroads: Paik's Electronic Superhighway. Afterimage 23 (6):

Smith, Walter. 2000. Nam June Paik's TV Buddha as Buddhist Art. Religion and the Arts 4 (3):

Strosnider, Luke.…