
Video Art: The First 25 Years
October 1, 1994 - November 29, 1994

Video Art: The First 25 Years
October 1, 1994 - November 29, 1994
Independent video is a hybrid form, a fertile meeting ground for the visual arts, performing arts, and telecommunications. It emerged with the
appearance of the first portapak cameras on the consumer market in the mid-1960s, an idealistic period marked by vociferous partisan
demonstrations on the part of anti-war, civil rights, and women's movement activists. Many journalists and documentarians took to the streets
with video cameras to record their personal impressions of dramatic social upheaval. And many artists eagerly appropriated video cameras as
tools for pioneering new fusions of perception and technology and exploring the impact of popular culture on individual identity.
The first videomakers were trailblazers. Recording was restricted to black-and-white imagery until artists/engineers like Nam June Paik and
Shuya Abe devised colorizer equipment. Editing was cumbersome until analog equipment was replaced by digital equipment. Exhibiting was
unwieldy until three-quarter-inch cassettes and playback decks began being marketed. Thus, what began as an awkward, radical art medium
became pliant and precise by the early 1970s, and gained a growing position in museums and universities, as well as on cable and public
television.
Video has helped redefine the role of art and artists in society. Many individuals took up videomaking in opposition to the sell-able,
commodifiable art object and the hierarchical gallery system, while others were motivated by a desire to reject television's rigid conventions
and broadcasters' control over program content. For most artists, television was slick, homogenous, overly commercial, and aesthetically
underexplored. In general, the earliest experimental video emphasized concept over object-making or technical skills. The idea and the
personal point of view took precedence.
The works in
Video Art: The First 25 Years were produced between 1967 and 1992. Articulate and independent-minded, these works raise
questions about sexual stereotyping, offer up autobiographical portraits, examine video process, and trace body-related performance art issues.
The exhibition demonstrates that artists' approaches to similar subject matter have evolved radically over the past quarter century: these
videotapes reflect and help define shifts in the past quarter-century's cultural and theoretical climate.
Organizers
Museum of Modern Art, New York
American Federation of Arts, New York
Curator
John B. Ravenal