By Jonathan Griffin
Chris Burden, the Los Angeles artist, died at his home in Topanga, California, on Sunday. He was 69 years old. He had been diagnosed with a malignant melanoma 18 months ago, but had reportedly kept the news private except for family and friends.
Since the end of the 1970s, Burden has been acknowledged as one of the most important American sculptors of his generation. But it was several years earlier, in 1971, when he first became known – notorious, even – while completing his graduate studies at UC Irvine, in Orange County. For his thesis exhibition, he made Five Day Locker Piece (1971), in which he endured five days inside a school locker, with only a tank of water to sustain him. His fusing of cool conceptualism and post-minimalism with politically and psychologically fraught body art was radical.
Chris Burden, Shoot (1971). Performance documentation
That same year, he made the work for which he is perhaps still best known. The fact that few people were at F Space in Santa Ana to witness Shoot (1971) first hand, or even saw the brief and anti-climatic documentation of the event, only added to its aura. In the midst of the self-immolation protests by Buddhist monks against the Vietnam War, and of U.S. military suppression of student protests at home, Burden’s action – in which he asked a friend to shoot him in his left arm – took on fiercely antagonistic overtones.
Chris Burden, The Big Wheel (1979). Installation view
In the following years, Burden began to translate his studies of violence, scale and power (both metaphorical and physical) into sculptures and installations. The Big Wheel, made in 1979, involved a three tonne, two and a half metre flywheel that was rotated at terrifying speeds by a motorbike. After the 1992 Los Angeles Riots, Burden manufactured the oversized but minutely accurate L.A.P.D Uniforms (1993), which threateningly but absurdly dwarf the viewer.
Despite being known as a modest, quiet man, Burden’s interest in scale was paralleled in the grandeur of his ambition. His projects became increasingly massive and included The Flying Steamroller (1996), a 12-tonne vehicle on a counterbalanced rotating arm; When Robots Rule: The Two Minute Airplane Factory (1999), in which a computer was programmed to build and launch model aeroplanes at Tate Britain (unsuccessfully, for most of its exhibition); and more recently Metropolis II (2011), a giant, complexly interwoven toy car track that took four years to build and which is permanently installed at Los Angeles County Museum of Art.
Chris Burden, Urban Light (2008). Installation view at the Los Angeles County Museum, USA
For many people in Los Angeles, however, Burden will forever be known not as the artist who had himself shot but the creator of the public sculpture Urban Light (2008), installed outside LACMA. The work, which consists of a neat grid of 202 antique lampposts, is illuminated at night, and is spectacularly beautiful. It is a monument to the past – and a gift to the future – of a still young city.