Taken by Manfred Montwé, this photograph shows Nam June Paik’s first solo show, Exposition of Music — Electronic Television held at Galerie Parnass, Wuppertal, in March 1963. At the central hall of the gallery, four pianos were displayed under the title of Klavier Intégral. One of them was an Ibach piano with its lid and hammer removed, and laid down with exposed keys and strings. Paik intended to make viewers play the piano with their feet by treading or running over it. On the opening day of the exhibition, however, Joseph Beuys showed up with an ax and swung it to strike the piano into shatters. Nobody had known of this happening beforehand, but Paik remembered that loud applause burst after the improvisational act. It was said that Montwé, who was in charge of maintaining the exhibition, brought a bucket of water and poured it over Beuys in order to take care of the situation. The piano remained there as it was, and visitors watched the sight of a broken piano and stepped over it. The piano had been obtained, with the help of the gallery owner Rolf Jährling, directly from the Ibachs, one of the most notable families in Wuppertal. Regarding the old piano, Paik recounted: “If the piano survived today, it would fetch a great price because it was the first piano work of Beuys. We did not have a capability to look ahead to the future and returned the broken piano to the Ibachs. They just throw it away.”
