The New York Times depicts Chris Burden as a “conceptual artist who in the line of duty had himself shot, pierced, starved, crucified, electrocuted, cut by glass, kicked down stairs, locked up, dropped from heights and nearly drowned, though by no means all at once…” (Margalit Fox, 2015).
"Urban Light" (2008). A collection of streetlights configured outside the LA County Museum of Art
His rise to fame came after a 1971 conceptual piece called “Shoot” in which Burden had himself shot in the arm from approximately 15 feet away. Burden’s career spans body art, minimalism, pop-art, conceptualism, and more. These are generic categories, but flow together into a river of bodily fluids that Burden himself excretes – quite literally in some cases.
Among his most famous early works were "Shoot" (1971), in which a confederate shot him in the arm with a .22 rifle from about 15 feet away.
The legacy of “Shoot” (1971) divided critics, and allowed Burden to explore new realms of opportunity. In some cases, Burden’s unofficial title as “Modernism’s Evel Knievel” let him push the boundaries of conceptualism, eventually bringing his work back into a more “palatable” realm.
He was a toy collector, street-culture enthusiast, and self-motivated mad-man. At one point in his career, he bought airtime on a local TV station in order to promote himself and his work. The artist was featured on the November 10th, 2011 episode of the Modern Art Notes Podcast, during which he describes his habit of never throwing anything away, his toy-collecting process, and his affinity for DIY construction. The central point of the podcast was Burden’s piece “Metropolis II”, a kinetic sculpture/model of a utopian city built inside the LA County Museum of Art.
"Metropolis 2" (2011), https://www.lacma.org/art/exhibition/metropolis-ii
The piece is a giant construction of Lego-like objects that create a cityscape. Burden talks about his father being an engineer, and how that always influenced his understanding of the world around him. Burden’s attraction to objects like cars and streetlights is a stark contrast to his affinity for the body and its limits.
Baudrillard might place Burden’s work into a category of “Call and Response” or depict his work as a deconstruction of the “ideal heroine of the American way of life” (Baudrillard, 51). In his conceptual body works, Burden often pushes his body and the viewer’s understanding of their own physicality to new heights. In his piece “Trans-fixed” (1974), Burden had himself nailed, Christlike, over the hump of a Volkswagen Beetle. His body work will remain his most famous. “Performed against the backdrop of the Vietnam War, it evoked early Christian martyrs, latter-day Zen masters and the violence of the war itself” (Fox, 2015).
"Trans-fixed" (1974). The artist had himself crucified on the hump of a Volkswagen.
We as the viewer are forced, when exposed to bodily harm, to ask ourselves how important our physical shells actually are, and what functions they perform for us and why. When the body is put in front of a camera or audience, and purposefully harmed, we cannot help but feel sorry for our own bodies. The experience of feeling pain is a universal one – we are obliged to cringe at the site of bodily damage, because our bodies could feel that same pain, if we were only brave enough to expose ourselves to it.
"L.A.P.D. Uniforms" (1993)
Here lies the barrier that separates Burden’s body from ours. We are conditioned to view the artist’s flesh as a spectacle or martyr. One that is affected, but not by us. We are not to blame for the harm he is doing, because we have no say in what has already happened to him. The films and photo stills of Burden’s performances that are reproduced for our viewing do elicit a visceral response from the audience, but the initial pieces have already been performed. There is a separation of truth and reality that different parties, in this case, will ultimately experience. The artist inflicts the pain, the cameraman captures it, and the audience relives it. In this way a paradoxical formula is created. Baudrillard calls it “neither true, nor false: but utopian” (Baudrillard, 50).
Bibliography:
Fox, Margalit. “Chris Burden, a Conceptualist With Scars, Dies at 69.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 12 May 2015, www.nytimes.com/2015/05/12/arts/chris-burden-a-conceptualist-with-scars-dies-at-69.html.
Green, Tyler. “Chris Burden, Kristen Hileman.” The Modern Art Notes Podcast, 10 Nov. 2011.
“L.A.P.D. Uniform.” L.A.P.D. Uniform | LACMA Collections, collections.lacma.org/node/201985.
Comments
Post a Comment