Chris Burden
Chris Burden | |
---|---|
Topanga Canyon, California, US | |
Education | Pomona College (BA) University of California, Irvine (MFA) |
Known for | Performance art, installation art, sculpture |
Spouses |
Christopher Lee Burden (April 11, 1946 – May 10, 2015) was an American artist working in performance art, sculpture and installation art. Burden became known in the 1970s for his performance art works, including Shoot (1971), where he arranged for a friend to shoot him in the arm with a small-caliber rifle. A prolific artist, Burden created many well-known installations, public artworks and sculptures before his death in 2015.
Early life and career
Burden was born in Boston in 1946 to Robert Burden, an engineer, and Rhoda Burden, a biologist.[3][4] He grew up in Cambridge, Massachusetts, France and Italy.[5]
At the age of 12, Burden had emergency surgery, performed without anesthesia, on his left foot after he was severely injured in a motor-scooter crash on the island of
He studied for his B.A. in visual arts, physics and architecture at Pomona College in 1965–1969[6] and received his MFA at the University of California, Irvine—where his teachers included Robert Irwin[5]—from 1969 to 1971.[7]
Work
Early performance art
Burden began to work in performance art in the early 1970s. He made a series of controversial performances in which the idea of personal danger as artistic expression was central. His first significant performance work, Five Day Locker Piece (1971), was created for his master's thesis at the University of California, Irvine,[3] and involved his being locked in a locker for five days.[8]
His 1973 work 747 involved the artist firing several pistol shots directly at a Boeing 747 passenger jet plane while it took off from Los Angeles International Airport. The piece had a single witness, photographer Terry McDonnell, who filmed the act.[citation needed]
His best-known work from that time is perhaps the 1971 performance piece Shoot, in which he was shot in his left arm by an assistant from a distance of about sixteen feet (5 m) with a .22 rifle.[7][9]
Other performances from the 1970s included Deadman (1972), in which Burden lay on the ground covered with a canvas sheet and a set of road flares until bystanders assumed he was dead and called emergency services (leading to his arrest);
One of Burden's most reproduced and cited pieces,
Later that year, Burden performed his piece White Light/White Heat at the Ronald Feldman Gallery in New York City. For this work of experiment performance and self-inflicting danger, Burden spent twenty-two days lying on a triangular platform in the corner of the gallery. He was out of sight from all viewers and he could not see them either. According to Burden, he did not eat, talk, or come down the entire time.[22]
Several of Burden's other performance pieces were considered controversial at the time: another "danger piece" was Doomed (1975), in which Burden lay motionless in a gallery at the
By the end of the 1970s, Burden turned instead to vast engineered sculptural installations.[3] In 1975, he created the fully operational B-Car, a lightweight four-wheeled vehicle that he described as being "able to travel 100 miles per hour and achieve 100 miles per gallon" (160 km/h and 43 km/L).[26] Some of his other works from that period are DIECIMILA (1977), a facsimile of an Italian 10,000 Lira note, possibly the first fine art print that (like paper money) is printed on both sides of the paper; The Speed of Light Machine (1983), in which he reconstructed a scientific experiment with which to "see" the speed of light; and the installation C.B.T.V. (1977), a reconstruction of the first ever made Mechanical television.
In 1978, he became a professor at University of California, Los Angeles, a position from which he resigned in 2005 due to a controversy over the university's alleged mishandling of a student's classroom performance piece that echoed one of Burden's own performance pieces.[9] Burden cited the performance in his letter of resignation, saying that the student should have been suspended during the investigation into whether school safety rules had been violated.[27] The performance allegedly involved a loaded gun, but authorities were unable to substantiate this.[28]
In 1979, Burden first exhibited his notable Big Wheel exhibition at Rosamund Felsen Gallery.[29] It was later exhibited in 2009 at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles.[30]
In 1980, he produced The Atomic Alphabet – a giant, poster-sized hand-colored lithograph – and performed the text dressed in leather and punctuating each letter with an angry stomp.
1988's Samson was a 100-ton
Later work
Many of Chris Burden's later sculptures are intricate installations and structures consisting of many small parts.[4] A Tale of Two Cities (1981) was inspired by the artist's fascination with war toys, bullets, model buildings, antique soldiers, and a fantasy about the twenty-fifth century – a time when he imagines the world will have returned to a system of feudal states. The room-filling miniature reconstruction of two such city-states, poised for war, incorporates 5,000 war toys from the United States, Japan, and Europe – on a 1,100-square-foot (100 m2), 20-short-ton (18 t)[4] sand base surrounded by a "jungle" made of houseplants.[37] The gallery-sized installation All the Submarines of the United States of America (1987) consists of 625 identical, small, handmade, painted-cardboard models that represent the entire United States submarine fleet dating from the late 1890s, when submarines entered the navy's arsenal, to the late 1980s.[38] He suspended the cardboard models on monofilaments from the ceiling, placing them at various heights so that as a group they appear to be a school of fish swimming through the ocean of the gallery space.[4] In 1992, he exhibited his Fist of Light during the Whitney Biennial exhibition in New York. It consisted of a sealed kitchen-sized metal box with hundreds of metal halide lamps burning inside. It required an industrial air conditioner to cool the room.
Hell Gate (1998), is a 28-foot-long (8.5 m) scale model, in Erector and Meccano pieces and wood, of the dramatic steel-and-concrete railroad bridge that crosses the
First presented at the Istanbul Biennial in 2001, Nomadic Folly (2001) consists of a large wooden deck made of Turkish cypress and four huge umbrellas. Visitors can relax and linger in this tent-like structure, replete with opulent handmade carpets, braided ropes, hanging glass and metal lamps, and wedding fabrics embroidered with sparkling threads and traditional patterns.[43]
In 2005, Burden released Ghost Ship, his crewless, self-navigating yacht which docked at
In 2008, Burden created Urban Light, a sculptural work consisting of 202 found antique street lights that had once stood around Los Angeles. He bought the lights from the contractor who installed Urban Light, Anna Justice.[46] The work is on view outside of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the solar-powered lights are illuminated at dusk.[46]
In the summer of 2011, Burden finished his kinetic sculpture,
Suspended from opposite ends of a telescoping balance beam of velvety rusted steel are a restored bright yellow 1974 Porsche sports car and a small meteorite. Porsche With Meteorite (2013) balances perfectly, with the heavier car much closer to the vertical support.[4]
Light of Reason was commissioned by Brandeis University in 2014 and stands outside the Rose Art Museum on campus.[52] The sculpture consists of three rows of 24 Victorian lamp posts which point away from the museum's entrance.[52] The sculpture serves as a gateway and outdoor event space, and has become a campus landmark.[53][52]
Burden's last completed project – a working
Exhibitions
In 2013, the
Collections
Burden's work is featured in prominent museum collections such as the
Art market
Burden was represented by Gagosian Gallery from 1991 until his death.[57] In 2009, a deal that Gagosian Gallery had struck to buy $3 million in gold bricks for Burden's work One Ton, One Kilo[58] was frozen when it turned out that the bricks had been acquired from a Houston-based company owned by financier Allen Stanford, who was later charged by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission[59] and sentenced to 110 years[60] in prison for cheating investors out of more than $7 billion over 20 years in one of the largest Ponzi schemes in American history.[61][62] As of 2013, the gallery's gold has been frozen while the SEC investigates Stanford and One Ton One Kilo cannot be mounted until the gold bullion is released.[63]
In popular culture
David Bowie's 1977 song "Joe the Lion" was inspired by Burden's 1974 Trans-Fixed, where Burden crucified himself on the roof of a Volkswagen Beetle.[64] Laurie Anderson titled her 1977 song "It's Not the Bullet that Kills You – It's the Hole (for Chris Burden)". Burden was also mentioned in the Jeff Lindsay book Dexter by Design, and in Norman Mailer's book The Faith of Graffiti. The poem "Doomed (1975)" by David Hernandez in his 2011 collection Hoodwinked[65] describes the Burden installation of the same name in Chicago. In poet Jason Schneiderman's 2020 collection Hold Me Tight[66] there is a sequence about Burden.
Personal life
Burden was married to multi-media artist
Burden died on May 10, 2015, 18 months after having been diagnosed with melanoma.[67] He was 69.
References
- ^ a b McKenna, Kristine (29 September 1992). "Unmasking Chris Burden". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 21 October 2019.
- ^ Kennedy, Randy (6 September 2013). "The Balance of a Career". The New York Times.
- ^ a b c d Margalit Fox (May 11, 2015), Chris Burden, a Conceptualist With Scars, Dies at 69 The New York Times
- ^ a b c d e Roberta Smith (October 3, 2013), The Stuff of Building and Destroying: 'Chris Burden: Extreme Measures,' at the New Museum The New York Times
- ^ a b c Peter Schjeldahl (May 14, 2007), Performance: Chris Burden and the limits of art The New Yorker.
- ^ "Chris Burden". Retrieved 11 August 2022.
- ^ a b Gagosian Gallery website. http://www.gagosian.com/artists/chris-burden/. Retrieved 25 May 2010.
- ^ Penn State Press
- ^ a b c Kastner, Jeffrey (January 1, 2005). "Gun Shy". Artforum. Retrieved 2007-02-17.
- ^ a b Art in California, in The New York Times, published September 2, 1973; retrieved April 10, 2019
- ^ McMahon, Paul (October 12, 2010). "In the Front Row for Chris Burden's Match Piece, 1972", in the Pomona Daily Collegian, archived at East of Borneo; retrieved 2011-12-15
- ^ Chris Burden, Cornerstone of Performance Art, Has Died at 69, by Andrew Russeth, at ARTnews; published May 10, 2015; retrieved April 10, 2019
- ^ SiteWorks: San Francisco performance 1969-85 - Fire Roll, at the University of Exeter
- ^ Review: 'Chris Burden: Extreme Measures', by Philip Kennicott, in The Washington Post; published December 19, 2013; retrieved April 10, 2019
- ^ Let's Make an Ordeal, by C. Carr, in The Village Voice; published December 8, 1998; retrieved August 3, 2023
- ^ a b Do You Believe in Television? Chris Burden and TV, by Nick Stillman, at East of Borneo
- ^ Performance Anthology, p. 195; edited by Carl Loeffler; published 1989 by Last Gasp
- ^ RIP Chris Burden, beloved even by the 'victim' in 'TV Hi-Jack', by John Rabe, at Southern California Public Radio; published May 13, 2015; retrieved April 10, 2019
- ^ TV Hijack. February 9, 1972, by Chris Burden, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art; retrieved April 10, 2019
- ISBN 2-910949-00-1.
- ^ "Chris Burden at Virtual Venice". Retrieved 6 August 2011.
- ^ "White Light/White Heat February 8 – March 1, 1975". Archived from the original on January 25, 2011. Retrieved December 14, 2010.
- ISBN 2-910949-00-1.
- ^ Chris Burden: "My God, are they going to leave me here to die?", by Roger Ebert; originally published in the Chicago Sun-Times, May 25, 1975; archived at RogerEbert.com; retrieved April 10, 2019
- ^ "Chris Burden and the limits of art," by Peter Schjeldahl. The New Yorker, May 14, 2007.
- ^ "1996 review of Burden's MAK retrospective". Archived from the original on May 17, 2008.
- )
- ^ Boehm, Mike (22 January 2005). "2 Artists Quit UCLA Over Gun Incident". Retrieved 26 January 2019 – via LA Times.
- ^ "Chris Burden»Pacific Standard Time at the Getty". Pacific Standard Time at the Getty. Retrieved 26 January 2019.
- ^ Carpenter, Susan (11 November 2009). "MOCA revs up Chris Burden's 'Big Wheel'". Los Angeles Times.
- ^ "Chris Burden's Atomic Alphabet – Daddy Types". daddytypes.com. Retrieved 26 January 2019.
- ^ "SFMOMA". Archived from the original on 2014-03-27. Retrieved 2012-08-07.
- ^ "Families". whitney.org. Retrieved 26 January 2019.
- ^ It Was Feared That Samson Might Topple the Museum, by Cathy Curtis, at the Los Angeles Times; published May 14, 1988; retrieved October 8, 2018
- ^ Museum Shorn of 'Samson' Exhibition, by Cathy Curtis, at the Los Angeles Times; published May 24, 1988; retrieved October 8, 2018
- archive.org, April 23, 2019
- ^ Chris Burden: A Tale of Two Cities, February 3 – June 10, 2007 Archived October 8, 2013, at the Wayback Machine Orange County Museum of Art, Newport Beach.
- ^ Chris Burden, All the Submarines of the United States of America (1987) Archived October 5, 2013, at the Wayback Machine Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas.
- ^ "Chris Burden, When Robots Rule: The Two-Minute Airplane Factory, exhibition catalogue". Store. Art Metropole. Archived from the original on 16 September 2010. Retrieved 24 November 2010.
- ^ "Chris Burden". artmag.com. Retrieved 24 November 2010.
- ^ Preece, R.J. (1999). "Chris Burden at the Tate Gallery". World Sculpture News / artdesigncafe.
- ^ Jones, J. (15 November 2011). "Tacita Dean's artwork malfunction". The Guardian.
- ^ a b c The Heart: Open or Closed, February 13 – March 27, 2010 Gagosian Gallery, Rome.
- ^ "Ghost Ship" Archived 2011-07-17 at the Wayback Machine at www.fairisle.org.uk
- ^ "Ghost Ship – a new commissioned work by Chris Burden" Archived September 21, 2007, at the Wayback Machine, Locus+, University of Southampton news release, 13 July 2005
- ^ a b "Chris Burden, Urban Light". LACMA Collections. Archived from the original on November 24, 2011. Retrieved November 22, 2011.
- ^ "Metropolis II". as displayed at LACMA. Archived from the original on 26 October 2018. Retrieved 8 May 2016.
- ^ "Metropolis II". How Chris Burden Created Metropolis II, A Tiny City Where 1,100 Toy Cars Zoom. Retrieved 8 May 2016.
- ^ a b "Chris Burden's Metropolis II on Its Way to LACMA". Los Angeles County Museum of Art. 22 November 2010. Retrieved 6 August 2011.
- ^ "Metropolis II by Chris Burden (the movie)". youtube.com. Retrieved 6 August 2011.
- ^ "Metropolis II". - what it is. Retrieved 8 May 2016.
- ^ a b c Bencks, Jarret (11 May 2015). "Chris Burden, 'One of the greatest American artists of his generation'". Brandeis University. Retrieved 11 August 2018.
- ^ "Chris Burden, Light of Reason". Rose Art Museum. Retrieved 11 August 2018.
- ^ Jorin Finkel (May 11, 2015), Remembering Chris Burden, the artist who traded daredevil performances for daring engineering Archived 2015-05-18 at the Wayback Machine The Art Newspaper.
- ^ a b Julia Halperin (May 13, 2015), Inside Chris Burden's briefcase[permanent dead link] The Art Newspaper.
- ^ Jessica Gelt (May 13, 2015), Frank Gehry on Chris Burden: 'gift of the gods', plus art left unfinished Los Angeles Times.
- ^ a b c Chris Burden Gagosian Gallery.
- ^ Adrienne Gaffney (March 5, 2009), Gagosian Gold Held Hostage in Ponzi-Scheme Investigation Vanity Fair.
- ^ Dana Goodyear (March 23, 2009), Goldless The New Yorker.
- ^ "Former Chief Investment Officer of Stanford Financial Group Pleads Guilty to Obstruction of Justice". US Department of Justice – June 21, 2012. 21 June 2012. Retrieved 2012-06-26.
- ^ "Allen Stanford jailed for 110 years for $7bn Ponzi". BBC News. 14 June 2012.
- ^ "Allen Stanford Sentencing: The Arguments From Both Sides". The Wall Street Journal. 14 June 2012.
- ^ Chris Burden: One Ton One Kilo, March 7 – April 4, 2009 Gagosian Gallery, Los Angeles.
- ISBN 9781554902712– via Google Books.
- ISBN 978-1-932511-96-3
- ISBN 978-1-597098-29-8
- ^ Knight, Christopher. "Chris Burden dies: Artist's light sculpture at LACMA was symbol of L.A." LA Times. Retrieved 10 May 2015.
External links
- Google Arts & Culture - Chris Burden
- Chris Burden by Robert Horvitz – detailed overview and analysis of Burden's early work, published in the May 1976 issue of Artforum magazine
- 1996 review of Burden's MAK retrospective
- Ghost Ship
- UbuWeb Film & Video: Chris Burden
- A feature article on Burden in the June 2008 issue of Men's Vogue
- "Poetic, Model: A New Criticism Of Chris Burden via Evil Monito Magazine"
- Chris Burden in the Mediateca Media Art Space
- Photos of Chris Burden's Urban Light near the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA – free to use for non-commercial purposes Archived 2023-02-21 at the Wayback Machine