Chris Burden was an American artist specialising in, earlier in his life, performance art and later on, sculpture and installation.

Born in a family of an engineer and a biologist, Burden had a severe injury at the age of 12, after when he became more and more interested in art practices. He studied in Pomona College and gained his B.A. degree in visual arts, physics and architecture. Following that, he was accepted into the University of California, Irvine for his MFA course from 1969 to 1971, during which time, American installation artist, Robert Irwin, was once his teacher.

In his early years of work, Burden had always valued performance more as to express himself. Through a series of disputed practices, he pushed his own sense and body condition to the limit and thus questioned the boundary between the real and surreal, mostly, in a violent form. One of his most notable works is Shoot (1971). In that piece, he asked his assistant to shoot him in his left arm with a rifle, which constituted the main body of the performance.

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Burden, C. (1971). Shoot. [performance] California: F Space.

 

Another piece by him that I would like to mention is TV Hijack (1972). During an interview invited by the art critic Phyllis Lutjeans, Burden suddenly stood up, held a knife to Lutjeans’s neck and asked the TV station to stop the live transmission. He then destroyed the tape and gave the station his own recordings from Burden’s crew. In this work, the tension was greatly depicted between people, human and technology, and the reality inside and outside the TV screen.

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Burden, C. (1972). TV Hijack. [performance] California.

 

By the end of the 1970s, Burden transitioned to sculptural art and installation. He also became a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles in 1978.

Burden once said: ‘Limits is a relative term. Like beauty, it is often in the eye of the beholder.’ With his controversial yet even avant-garde actions, Burden was definitely a remarkable figure in performance art.

I chose him for that I can really see the sincerity in him as an artist. As I might argue, artists ought to be determined and committed enough to insert their own spirits into the works and thus render them alive. Burden’s radical performances had engaged himself, as to the other beings and existences, into its mysterious and ever-changing nature. This is the best I imagine art can be.

 

 

 

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Task Requirement:

A summary of the work of a specific artist or curator, including commentary on their influence within their professional field, and your reasons for selecting them.asis each one places on this idea.