Chris Burden
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| Chris Burden | |
 Chris Burden during the performance of his 1974 piece Trans-fixed where he was nailed to the back of a Volkswagen |
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| Born | 1946 Boston, Massachusetts |
| Nationality | American |
| Field | Performance artist |
| Training | Pomona College University of California, Irvine |
Chris Burden (born in Boston, Massachusetts in 1946) is an American artist.
[edit] Biography
He studied for his B.A. in visual arts, physics and architecture at Pomona College and received his MFA at the University of California, Irvine from 1969 to 1971.
Burden's reputation as a performance artist started to grow in the early 1970s after he made a series of controversial performances in which the idea of personal danger as artistic expression was central. His most well-known act 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 five meters. Burden was taken to a psychiatrist after this piece. Many interpretations have been made regarding this piece. Many saw it as a statement about both the war in Vietnam and the American right to bear arms. Other performances from the 1970s were Five Day Locker Piece (1971), Deadman (1972), B.C. Mexico (1973), Fire Roll (1973), TV Hijack (1972), Doomed (1975) and Honest Labor (1979).
One of Burden’s most famous pieces, Trans-Fixed took place in 1974 at Speedway Avenue in Venice, California. For this performance, Burden lay face up on a Volkswagen Beetle and had nails hammered into both of his hands, as if he were being crucified on the car. The car was pushed out of the garage and the engine revved for two minutes before being pushed back into the garage.
Later that year, Burden performed his piece White Light/White Heat at the Ronald Feldman gallery in New York. 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.
Several of Burden's other performance pieces were considered somewhat controversial at the time: another "danger piece" was Doomed, in which Burden lay motionless in a museum gallery under a slanted sheet of glass, with a clock running nearby. Unbeknownst to the museum owners, Chris was prepared to remain in that position until someone interfered in some way with the piece. Forty-five hours later, a museum guard placed a pitcher of water in reaching distance to Burden. Burden then smashed the glass, and took a hammer to the clock, thus ending the piece.
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". 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 it is printed on, 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.[1] 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. The performance allegedly involved a loaded gun, but authorities were unable to substantiate this.
In 2005, Burden released Ghost Ship, his crewless, self-navigating yacht which docked at Newcastle-upon-Tyne on 28 July after a 330-mile 5-day trip from Fair Isle, near Shetland. The project was commissioned by Locus+ at a cost of £150,000, and was funded with a significant grant from the UK arts council, being designed and constructed with the help of the Marine Engineering Department of the University of Southampton. It is said to be controlled via onboard computers and a GPS system, however in case of emergency the ship is 'shadowed' by an accompanying support boat. Other important projects include a massive box containing thousands of halogen lights at the Whitney Museum and a machine that produced paper airplanes at the Hayward Gallery.
Chris Burden is married to multi-media artist Nancy Rubins.
Burden was referenced in David Bowie's 1977 song "Joe the Lion".
He currently lives and works in Los Angeles, CA.
[edit] References
- ^ Kastner, Jeffrey (January 1, 2005). "Gun Shy". Artforum. http://artforum.com/diary/id=8299. Retrieved on 2007-02-17.
[edit] External links
- 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 June 2008 issue of Men's Vogue
- "Poetic, Model: A New Criticism Of Chris Burden via Evil Monito Magazine"
