Collage: Develop Creative Powers / Were you born to make art? / Rhapsody in Video - a very scarce Nam June Paik book!

Develop Creative Powers, RTomens, 2026

Yes, I try, I TRY to develop my creative powers - those latent (dormant?), inherent, even? It can be taken two ways: develop what you have...or...actually develop some where there were none...right? Oh that ol' question: born with art right in you, or develop it through...interests? Parental encouragement? Teachers? Ah, those poor teachers at my secondary school...they did try...but what a disappointment I must have been, to the Art teacher in particular, who could see some talent, let's say aptitude, but could he get me to knuckle down and get the qualifications needed to go to college? What do you think? Yeah, me, the rebel without a cause.

I lean towards the born-with-it idea. Why? What else explains my drive to draw at the age of 10? Certainly not parental encouragement. My folks were not creative in the slightest. No-one in my family was artistic. They watched the telly whilst I drew pictures in the same living-room. So it went. Rush out of school once the final bell had been rung and into Work. 

I haven't made art consistently since leaving school. There were fallow periods when I was probably too depressed about my working life to do anything creative. Still, during Punk I made a few zines. For some reason I was attracted to writing more than art as the 80s dawned. So I set about writing novels and poetry. I even bought a typewriter. My handwriting has never been great. A few poems were published in workshop zines. I read poetry some on stages around the Aylesbury area. And so on.

You can teach Art but can you teach someone to be an artist? What's the difference? Perhaps there isn't one. I used to think being an artist was a lifetime's impulse to create...an overriding urge...a need? Now, I'm not sure. Someone could be that driven artist for just a few years, then stop because...they no longer felt the urge...or a career took over...or family life took over...etc. I make no grand claims to being a 'dedicated' artist. I mean, I don't pretend to be...anything...except a man striving to maintain some sense of equilibrium...against the odds stacked in favour of going crazy when confronted with...everything from daily life to political conflict...and seeing Mars bars gradually shrink in size. I swear, it's not that my hands have got bigger since I scoffed one as a child! 

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Here's an  incredibly rare book, Rhapsody in Video. It's unusual not to find more than one page about a book about such a well-known artist. I've searched but not been able to find any except this one

It's here.

Beethoven - Nam June Paik / Book: We Are In Open Circuits

On a rainy Sunday where better to go than our closest art gallery, the Zabludowicz? Well, I'm sure there were other options but we couldn't think of any. We had no idea what to expect from the current show but to our delight the first thing to greet us was Nam June Paik's Beethoven (2001). It was all downhill from there - ouch! That's a little harsh on the other artists, eh? But there it sat, defying the rest to be as imaginative, funny, profound (?), interesting, appealing - in my eyes, but you know, I'm like that. No, not automatically against all contemporary art, just...Paik takes some beating as far as my taste goes if you're putting him in with more contemporary artists. These are my photos of Beethoven. 

We Are in Open Circuits: Writings by Nam June Paik is very much worth getting, by the way. Posted below are a few pages from it.

Nam June Paik at Tate Modern

You can take a trip down the information superhighway of olde with Nam June Paik at Tate Modern - why not? Bound to be entertaining - and it is. Funny how, despite being lumbered with the 'Godfather of Video Art' (or whatever they say) title, the robots are lovable retro-futurist as opposed to sleek examples of up-to-date tech advancement - guess his Fluxus roots show through - and they do throughout the exhibition, literally in one corridor filled with posters and papers....see the Symphony below (for ten members). 

...this cabinet of stuff from his studio was a highlight...

...spotted some mail art from Ray Johnson...

...now we're all interconnected Nam June Paik's pieces look like quaint artefacts from the pre-smartphone/PC world, which in a sense they are, but it was a better vision, a humane, often comedic vision as opposed to the dry conceptual claptrap artists can make out of using technology today. 'What's on the telly?' We used to ask. Paik showed us what could be on the telly and how the telly could be art.