Bob Hope

Bob Hope

Bob Hope was a popular comedian, actor, singer, dancer and author, who made appearances in diverse fields including radio, television programs, movies and theaters. Nam June Paik made a series of works featuring such celebrities as Humphrey Bogart, David Bowie, Lauran Bacall and Marilyn Monroe as well as Hope. This is derived from Paik’s consistent interest from the 1970s in the power of mass media, the media consumption of images, and the boundary between high art and popular art. In 1984, a broadcast program produced by the artists’ collective ‘Cable Soho’ in New York showed artist Jaime Davidovich sneaking into a press conference and asking Hope about video art and Paik. Although Hope did not know about these at that time, he expressed positive views on a television of the future that were to be developed by experimental artists, and wished to become part of it. As if to respond to this, Paik’s Bob Hope transforms Hope, the embodiment of the American television culture, into a robot that expresses the past and the future of Hope at once.