Critics on art: video art

The video is a recording of the lecture by the art critic Pranabranjan Ray delivered at the Lalit Kala Akademi, New Delhi as part of the Critics on Art series on 24th August, 2010. The speaker looks at the category of video art and probes the question whether video art is art. He gives a historical background of the medium which emerged as a technology of recording, surveillance and reconstruction and reproduction in the mid-20th century. The video works of Andy Warhol made from 1963 to 1987 are cited extensively in the lecture like the 16mm film, Sleep (1963). An overview of the emergence of video art with the work of the Korean artist Nam Jun Paik’s Buddha TV Buddha (1974) and works of other pioneers like Vito Acconci and William Atherton is also provided by the speaker.