In this contemplative closed circuit installation, Paik has created a visual tautology - a bronze replica in miniature of the well-known Rodin sculpture, "The Thinker", regarding its own image on a television monitor. In this work Paik was criticising, as long ago as in the seventies, the superfluity and pervasiveness of TV culture, and endeavouring to encourage a critical attitude on the part of the viewer. The installation was preceded by an earlier version, the video sculpture TV Buddha. It can therefore be seen as a western companion piece to the earlier work. The melting down of elements from earlier works into new creations can be seen as a working method that is fundamental to Paik’s productions. In his videotapes this constant recycling of other materials, his own and those of others, is particularly prominent, and “he is proud of the fact that for almost twenty years now he himself as a video artists have no longer had to use the camera” (Moving Image, 1992, p.123) The Rodin sculpture could equally well be seen as representing the modern artist: faced with the reality of the media, the artist falls into an existential crisis. René Block collection. On loan to the Neues Museum in Nuremberg.