Just started learning R, unable to render demo("graphics") - r

Question

I googled around for this issue and couldn't find anything, but hopefully someone on SW can help diagnose this issue!
While running on R version 3.4.1, I tried running
demo("graphics")
and the result was a blank window, unable to render any of the colors/graph (see image).
After exiting out of the window and pressing return again, another blank window (exact same thing) pops up. When I exit out of the second window, I am left with the following command line output:
> demo("graphics")
demo(graphics)
---- ~~~~~~~~
Type <Return> to start :
> # Copyright (C) 1997-2009 The R Core Team
>
> require(datasets)
> require(grDevices); require(graphics)
> ## Here is some code which illustrates some of the differences between
> ## R and S graphics capabilities. Note that colors are generally
specified
> ## by a character string name (taken from the X11 rgb.txt file) and
that line
> ## textures are given similarly. The parameter "bg" sets the background
> ## parameter for the plot and there is also an "fg" parameter which sets
> ## the foreground color.
>
>
> x <- stats::rnorm(50)
> opar <- par(bg = "white")
> plot(x, ann = FALSE, type = "n")
Hit <Return> to see next plot:
Error in plot.new() : attempt to plot on null device
I checked, and the "graphics" package definitely exists and is in libPath. Moreover, it appears that demo("persp") also fails in a similar way.
Anyone know what might be causing this issue?
Edit 1:
Thanks for responding!
I am running this from bash, on Ubuntu 16.04.
Here is the requested terminal output:
> sessionInfo()
R version 3.4.1 (2017-06-30)
Platform: x86_64-pc-linux-gnu (64-bit)
Running under: Ubuntu 16.04.3 LTS
Matrix products: default
BLAS: /usr/lib/libblas/libblas.so.3.6.0
LAPACK: /usr/lib/lapack/liblapack.so.3.6.0
locale:
[1] LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8 LC_NUMERIC=C
[3] LC_TIME=en_US.UTF-8 LC_COLLATE=en_US.UTF-8
[5] LC_MONETARY=en_US.UTF-8 LC_MESSAGES=en_US.UTF-8
[7] LC_PAPER=en_US.UTF-8 LC_NAME=C
[9] LC_ADDRESS=C LC_TELEPHONE=C
[11] LC_MEASUREMENT=en_US.UTF-8 LC_IDENTIFICATION=C
attached base packages:
[1] stats graphics grDevices utils datasets methods base
loaded via a namespace (and not attached):
[1] compiler_3.4.1
> dev.off()
Error in dev.off() : cannot shut down device 1 (the null device)
Edit 2:
Turns out, when I call
dev.new()
before a demo(), the demo is suddenly able to run. However, demo() will not run without it. This doesn't explain to me why demo() doesn't work off the start though.