Performers bleed for art
Burden delivers performance art innovative shot in the arm
By Nisha Gopalan
On Nov. 19, 1971 at 7:45 p.m., performance artist Chris Burden
stood in anticipation while his friend, 15 feet away, shot him in
his left arm with a .22-caliber rifle.
Journalists would later refer to this performance entitled
"Shoot" as "the shot heard around the world."
Though more concerned with his art itself rather than its
implications in the art world, Burden, as a part of the new
movement of performance art, became one of the first to use
self-mutilation. Therefore one may consider Burden to be, arguably,
a father of provocative performance art.
"(Once) I was giving some lectures and someone said, ‘Well,
aren’t you a masochist?’ I said, ‘No, I’m an artist,’" says
Burden.
"I’m not saying that things couldn’t go wrong, but the object of
the performance wasn’t to inflict pain or suffering on myself,"
contends Burden, a UCLA professor of new genres.
"To the contrary, I was trying to deal with the psychology of
knowing beforehand. If you set up some sort of intense situation,
then the two months beforehand and how you feel afterwards are most
important."
"The actual event is not that significant in a certain sense,"
adds Burden. "People get outraged because they have this bucolic
fantasy about what art is  a pretty girl in a pretty field
full of flowers."
Burden attended UC Irvine for his graduate work, receiving his
masters in fine arts. He focused upon minimalist sculpture, in
which the artist strives to reduce things to their primary
elements.
At the time, performance art represented to Burden the logical
extension of minimal sculpture. Having created progressively larger
sculptures, Burden realized that one had to walk around the
sculpture to view it.
"What is the quintessential element of sculpture?" asked Burden.
"Sculpture forces the human body to move."
Still concerned with the phenomenon of space, for his master’s
thesis show, Burden performed the landmark "Five Day Locker Piece"
(1971) during which he stayed in a 2-by-2-by-3-foot locker for five
days.
"I kept thinking about making a box and being in a box. And then
I saw this row of lockers and I thought, ‘Ah, better to do this
performance in the lockers.’ And I didn’t even think of it as a
performance so much. But better to do this work of art rather than
make a box … making objects and then having them interact with my
body. It’s better to use something that already exists because then
I’ve eliminated the object," explains Burden of his investigation
into minimalism.
"Sculpture’s really about human physicality and human emotion,"
Burden says.
In "Trans-Fixed" (1974) Burden delved into Christian imagery
when he crucified himself, nails through hands, onto a Volkswagen
with its engine running. Here, he sought to investigate human
emotion through one of the most moving depictions of human
suffering in western society, a crucified Christ. The use of a
Volkswagen, a car of the people, seemed to somewhat demystify the
Christ-like suffering.
Burden considered his audience an integral part of the work.
"The audience was always structured into the work," Burden
says.
Clearly he makes that his goal was always to use "these charged
moments to build an aesthetic structure." To simply deem his work
ugly or masochistic, in Burden’s case, undermines his
intentions.
By the mid-1970s, Burden became fed up with shortsighted,
sensational press, such as a Newsweek critic who labeled Burden as
the "Evil Knievel of art." Individuals growingly associated his
performances with entertainment value rather than artistic
endeavors. So Burden increasingly created, once again, sculpture
that did not utilize his body. Now, he no longer participates in
performance art.
"Most people are peripheral to what they don’t understand," says
Burden. "I realized that I am a traditional artist. I am just like
the impressionists and Van Gogh. If they were alive today, they
would be doing the kind of work I do.