By: Ellen C. Caldwell
For JSTOR Daily
Influential sculptor and performing artist Chris Burden died recently at age 69. Known in his earlier artistic career for his alarming and often physically threatening performance pieces, Burden was also equally reaching with his monumental installations like “Urban Light” (2008) at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) or his challenges to American foreign policy with works like “The Other Vietnam Memorial” (1991) and “America’s Darker Moments” (1994).
In the 1970s and early ‘80s, Burden shocked sparse handfuls of viewers with performance pieces that included having a friend shoot him in the arm, crawling through broken glass, and crossing electrical wires across his bare chest. More than performing for audiences, however, his work was about documenting the entire process, while creating a physical and lasting archive.
In Ingrid Schaffner’s reflection of Chris Burden’s early career for Grand Street, Schaffner introduces Burden’s carefully chosen photographs of such moments and events, which he meticulously subtitled and documented as if for a police report…