Today few of us own traditional television sets, as the console gave way long ago to newer devices. Yet our fascination with that familiar box persists. TV influences our lives in countless ways—from fashion to travel, with the new term “set jetting” used to characterize vacation destinations inspired by what appears on our screens.
For decades, television—both the set and its content—has also drawn the attention of a wide range of visual artists. Characters, locations, storylines and commercials have all infiltrated paintings and photographs, as well as sculpture and video, with artists quick to consider, mimic and critique what they see on the small screen. Artists have likewise used TVs as props to convey domestic intimacy and nostalgia for another time or place. Even artists who grew up after the transformation to flat screens and handheld gadgets have depicted “magic boxes” within public spaces, such as bars and lounges, and in the privacy of homes.
This portfolio by a diverse group of artists parallels the evolution of televised content. While Edward Kienholz and Nancy Reddin Kienholz were attentive to the social politics of the medium beginning in the early 1960s, Barkley L. Hendricks chronicled the shows broadcast in his local pub between 1988 and 1997. For artists like Oliver Clegg and Paul Winstanley, the TV offers a window to other spaces, both interior and exterior. Meanwhile, the work of Martin Wong and Daniel Tyree Gaitor-Lomack remind us that its power to communicate is entirely one-way.
As traditional TV sets approach extinction, they still provide a sense of connection and familiarity that we don’t often find in the machines now regularly held in the palms of our hands.
Martin Wong
Martin Wong (1946-1999) depicted in painstaking detail the urban conditions of Manhattan’s Lower East Side—including its streets, tenement buildings, subway cars and graffiti. One recurring feature of his work is the bricks that form many of the city’s buildings. In Untitled (Brick TV), he covered the screen of a portable set in a brick pattern, perhaps as commentary on its one-way communication stream.