Chris Burden didn’t just push boundaries in art; he often seemed to obliterate them with a calculated embrace of genuine physical danger. Emerging in the early 1970s, a period rife with artistic experimentation and societal upheaval, Burden’s performance pieces quickly gained notoriety, not merely for their conceptual underpinnings, but for the very real risks he subjected his own body to. Unlike staged theatrics, the peril in Burden’s work was authentic, placing both the artist and his often-unwitting audience in profoundly uncomfortable, ethically charged territory.
The Crucible of Early Performances
Burden’s early career is defined by a series of actions that tested endurance, pain thresholds, and the limits of personal safety. These weren’t abstract explorations; they were visceral encounters with vulnerability. Perhaps the most infamous is Shoot (1971). The premise was starkly simple: Burden stood in a gallery space while an assistant, positioned a short distance away, shot him in the arm with a .22 rifle. The act itself was over in an instant, but its reverberations have lasted decades. It was an undeniable act of violence, self-inflicted via proxy, transforming the gallery from a space of contemplation into a site of potential lethality.
The performance titled Shoot took place in November 1971 at F-Space Gallery in Santa Ana, California. Burden instructed a friend to shoot him in the left arm from a distance of about fifteen feet. The intention was reportedly a graze wound, though the bullet did penetrate his arm. This event remains a pivotal, controversial moment in performance art history.
This wasn’t an isolated incident. In Five Day Locker Piece (1971), Burden confined himself for five continuous days in a standard metal school locker, measuring just two feet high, two feet wide, and three feet deep. Above him was a five-gallon container of water; below, an empty container for waste. Here, the danger was less immediate violence and more about extreme physical and psychological endurance, claustrophobia, and deprivation. He pushed his body’s basic needs to the breaking point within a container symbolic of institutional constraint.
Then came Trans-Fixed (1974). For this piece, Burden lay face-up on the rear deck of a Volkswagen Beetle and had nails hammered through the palms of his hands into the car’s roof. The car was then pushed out of a garage, the engine revved loudly for two minutes, and then pushed back in. The visual reference to crucifixion was unavoidable, blending religious iconography with modern technology and consumer culture. The physical pain and risk of serious injury were, once again, entirely real. He wasn’t pretending to be nailed to the car; he *was* nailed to the car.
Other Confrontations with Peril
Burden’s exploration of risk continued in various forms:
- Through the Night Softly (1973): Burden crawled, bare-chested and with his hands bound behind his back, across fifty feet of broken glass on Main Street in Los Angeles. The performance was documented in a stark television commercial, inserting this act of vulnerability and pain into the flow of mundane advertising.
- Deadman (1972): For this piece, Burden lay down on La Cienega Boulevard, a busy Los Angeles street, completely covered by a canvas tarp, with only two flares placed near him as minimal warning. He remained there until police arrived and arrested him. He courted death by traffic, relying entirely on chance and the attentiveness of drivers.
- Doorway to Heaven (1973): Burden pushed two live electrical wires into his chest. While witnesses claimed to see sparks, the primary element was the palpable potential for electrocution, the invisible threat made manifest.
Motivations and Interpretations
Why engage in such extreme acts? Burden himself was often reticent about explaining his motivations, leaving interpretation open. Several readings persist. Some see the work as a direct response to the climate of the time – the televised violence of the Vietnam War, the sense of powerlessness in the face of large systems, and the desensitization of society. By enacting real violence or putting himself in real danger, Burden forced a confrontation with realities that media often sanitized or abstracted. Could watching a man actually get shot in an art gallery break through the viewer’s passive consumption of mediated violence?
There’s also the exploration of control and agency. In pieces like Shoot or Deadman, Burden set up the conditions but relinquished ultimate control over the outcome, highlighting the role of chance, external forces, or the actions of others (the assistant, the drivers, the police). This tension between the artist’s intent and the unpredictability of the real world was central.
The audience’s role is also crucial. Viewers of Burden’s performances were rarely comfortable spectators. They became witnesses, sometimes complicit, often anxious. Their presence charged the event, raising questions about voyeurism, responsibility, and the very definition of an art experience. Could you simply watch someone potentially harm themselves severely and remain neutral? Burden’s work implicated the viewer in the unfolding drama.
Evolution Beyond Bodily Risk
It’s important to note that Burden’s career didn’t solely consist of these intensely dangerous performances. While they cemented his early reputation, he largely moved away from directly risking his own body in the later 1970s and beyond. His focus shifted towards large-scale sculptures and complex kinetic installations. Works like Urban Light (2008), the assemblage of vintage street lamps outside the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, or Metropolis II (2011), an intricate, buzzing model city with thousands of miniature cars, seem far removed from the raw peril of his early performances.
However, one could argue that themes of power, systems, potential energy, and even latent danger persist. Metropolis II, with its frantic, ceaseless motion, speaks to the stresses and complexities of modern urban life. His massive sculpture Beam Drop (1984 and subsequent versions), involving dropping large steel I-beams from a crane into wet concrete, retains a sense of controlled violence and industrial force, albeit directed at materials rather than his own flesh. The risk may have become less personal, less immediate to his physical form, but the fascination with forces, limits, and engineered systems endured.
Legacy of Danger
Chris Burden’s legacy is complex. His early performance work remains profoundly influential, demonstrating the power of using the artist’s own body as the primary medium and confronting the audience with undeniable reality. He pushed the definition of art to encompass acts of extreme endurance and genuine risk, raising ethical questions that continue to be debated. He showed that performance could be more than representation; it could be a direct, unmediated event with real consequences.
His willingness to place himself in harm’s way set a precedent, though few artists since have taken quite the same path of courting potentially lethal outcomes. Burden’s work forces us to consider the relationship between art and life, the artist and the audience, and the lines we draw – or erase – between safety and transgression in the name of expression. He carved a unique, often terrifying, niche in art history, forever associated with the visceral understanding that in his performances, the danger was never just an illusion.
