Late artist’s legacy of innovation lives on
In his 1971 performance art piece “Shoot,” Chris Burden introduced himself to the artistic world by having his assistant shoot him in the left arm from only 16 feet away. Still relatively unknown at the time, he was not only endangering himself but his potential for a career — and that was intriguing to many viewers.
On May 10, Burden passed away at the age of 69, causing the art community and the media to examine his expansive collection of works once again. He was the man behind “Urban Light” (2008), the photogenic lamps in front of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. He also put together kinetic sculptures such as “Metropolis II” (2011) or “Porsche with Meteorite” (2013) that would have a life of their own, moving and reacting long after installation. He was a professor and a working artist, straddling the divide between academic interpretation and physical involvement in the art world.
His work was all about extremes, reactions and involvement. An onlooker to any one of his pieces develops an opinion immediately; his work incites a knee-jerk reaction that is alternately hatred, love or simple confusion. A viewer cannot just disregard the work. This is, perhaps, one of the most important aspects of his career both as a performance artist and an artist of the post-modern era. In a world where so many things compete for the public’s attention, art often needs to reach out to viewers and draw them in, addressing them specifically and not letting them go easily. Burden realized this as early as his first major works in the 1970s — art must be challenging, both to the artist and the audience. While that concept of “challenge” is distinctly different for each context, for Burden, it was the creation of massive extremes and dramatic involvement.
Born in 1946, Burden showed promise early on both academically and artistically in the world of fine art, completing his undergraduate degree at Pomona College and his Master of Fine Arts at University of California, Irvine. In a 1979 interview with Jim Moisan for “High Performance,” he explained that it was during his work toward his master’s degree that he first began to create art that required involvement on the part of the audience as well as manipulation of the mind, body or both.
It was when Burden studied under Robert Irwin, a Southern California painter and installation artist, that he first put together performances that attracted the public’s attention: “Shoot” (1971); “Five Day Locker Piece” (1971), where he stayed trapped inside a locker for five days with only a 5-gallon jug of water; “Through the Night Softly” (1973), where he filmed himself crawling through 50 feet of broken glass; and “Transfixed” (1974), where he had an assistant crucify him on the roof of a Volkswagen car. The elements of danger and fear seemed implicit in his pieces, but perhaps more than anything these earliest works were about involvement; he explained to Moisan in his interview that the goal was to be as highly involved in his mental and physical fate as possible. In a post-modern world filled with uncertainty, playing with ideas of control over oneself and one’s situation was more than timely.
Fast-forward 40 years: The Chris Burden who passed away less than a month ago was a changed artist. Instead of performances, he was putting together moving structures of monumental size that were much less notorious but no less involved. Throughout those years, Burden matured as an artist — he didn’t need to be so present physically in his artwork because he was creating a long legacy and body of work that was able to speak for him and would continue to do so in his absence. Instead of being single moments in time, his more recent pieces can be revisited; they are self-sustaining works set in motion by Burden.
It is within this context that Burden’s last piece, “Ode to Santos Dumont” (2015), emerged. After almost 10 years of research, coordination, invention and assembly, it is being presented at LACMA from May 18 until June 21. The exhibition hall is empty except for the audience and the airship, giving the huge room the feeling of a garage workshop housing experimental prototypes. The piece itself is a cigar-shaped blimp modeled after Alberto Santos-Dumont’s dirigible that flew around Paris in 1901 and set the tone for a century of technological advancement, creativity and ingenuity. In fact, it’s propelled by an exact quarter-scale replica of a 1903 De Dion gasoline motor, sized to fit the proportions of the piece. The balloon itself, which appears to be made out of a material about the consistency of a beach ball, is attached to the motor and body of the ship with nearly invisible wires that give “Ode to Santos Dumont” the feeling of untethered lightness.
But for all the lightness and simplicity of the visual established by the piece, there is a depth of complexity and intricacy that lies at its foundation. Master mechanic John Biggs, who was there at the performance to make sure that the airship worked as promised, veritably invented and constructed the quarter-scale motor from scratch. Anchored with thin wires to a center rotation point, the blimp is filled with a very specific amount of helium so that it reaches neutral buoyancy; this causes it to always seek a perfect 60-foot circle path no matter where it starts out. The perfection of the proportions is nearly palpable.
“Ode to Santos Dumont” is a highly refined machine with relevance as an homage, technological feat and aesthetic statement. It is also perhaps most meaningful as the last point on Burden’s career timeline marked by involvement and progressive maturation. In the case of the construction of the airship, Burden created the concept and then delegated tasks, overseeing everything but solely responsible for nothing. Even if Burden had lived to see its debut, he would still not be directly involved with it as he had with his early works.
The mechanism is highly specialized, as only Biggs has the skills to ensure its flight; once it is set in motion, not even he has a hand in it. With Ode to Santos Dumont, Burden created performance art without a performer, embedding the “performance” aspect within the artwork’s own motions. As such, Burden is always able to be there, present in his legacy of performance, movement and involvement that seem to have been the culmination of his life.