Kim Vorperian
Spring 2008
Advanced Performance Art IRP
There is a Fine Line Between Genius and Crazy
and Chris Burden is a Master Funambuler
Chris Burden is known world-wide as one of the prominent performance artists of the 20th Century. His career has been long, consisting of numerous performances most of which have been on the more controversially dangerous side of performance. Chris Burden has been shot, drowned, burned, dragged across broken glass, bedridden, and “doomed”. All of these acts were self-inflicted, but the real question is why? Some say because he's 
an idiot or mentally ill. Others look at Burden's work as an extreme way of working with important issues that concern the conceptual properties of art. I waver, leaning sometimes towards the former explanation for his performance activities, which is why I will not be focusing on his approach to the psychological experience of danger, physical risk, and pain. Nor will I address his aggressive abuse of the body as an art object. I am more interested and convinced aesthetically by his work dealing with the psychology of the artist/spectator relationship, which is what I will be discussing through his works in this paper.
an idiot or mentally ill. Others look at Burden's work as an extreme way of working with important issues that concern the conceptual properties of art. I waver, leaning sometimes towards the former explanation for his performance activities, which is why I will not be focusing on his approach to the psychological experience of danger, physical risk, and pain. Nor will I address his aggressive abuse of the body as an art object. I am more interested and convinced aesthetically by his work dealing with the psychology of the artist/spectator relationship, which is what I will be discussing through his works in this paper.
A quick look into Burden's past will aid in the understanding of his concepts later in life. Burden was born in Boston in 1946. His father was an engineer and his mother got her master's in biology. He moved around a lot living primarily in Italy and France. He went to Pomona College, in Claremont, California, where his declared major was in architecture. On the side he studied physics, but gravitated toward art, with a special interest in Dadaism. One of his major influences is Duchamp which becomes quite apparent with later use of the body as an object. Burden graduated from the University of California, Irvin, in 1971. It was his master's thesis, the 5 day locker stint, that allowed him to be taken very seriously by the art community from that moment on.
Burden has dealt with the psychological aspects of the artist/spectator relationship in a variety of contexts. For one performance in Newport Beach, 1972, he sat immobile in a chair, wearing dark glasses, facing two cushions and an inviting box of marijuana cigarettes. The people that walked by naturally assumed that he was watching them, but the insides of his glasses were painted black, and he refused to speak. He reported, in his record of the work, “Many people tried to talk to me, one assaulted me and one left sobbing hysterically.”
In another work called “Back to You”, 1974, Burden lay half-naked in a moving elevator. A volunteer was requested and then proceeded into the enclosed elevator. Visibility was completely cut off between the audience and the inside of the elevator except for a monitor connected to the outside. The volunteer was instructed by a sign on the wall to “stick push-pins into Chris Burden”. In this particular performance the volunteer hesitated and then asked if Burden “want(ed) them in a particular place?”. There was no reply and the audience shuttered as the volunteer proceeded to stick push-pins into Burdens torso.
One work that stands out as a major accomplishment in the realm of artist/spectator relations is his work “Doomed” performed in April, 1979. This performance took place in the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago. The piece consisted of Burden setting a clock on the wall at midnight and then laying down on the floor under a leaning sheet of glass. Viewers came and went, but Burden didn’t move. Forty-five hours and ten minutes passed, during this time Burden inevitably soiled his pants. Then a young museum employee named Dennis O’Shea took it upon himself to place a container of water within Burden’s reach. At this point Burden stood up and smashed the clock with a hammer and left. This was the only time that Burden took on a public piece that put himself in extreme danger. What “Doomed” conveyed successfully was the absurdity of the conventions by which, through assuming the role of viewers, we are both blocked and immunized from ethical responsibility. In O’Shea’s case, the situation was complicated by his duty to maintain the inviolability of art works.
The question that comes into my mind is, what is it about an art piece that makes us feel unable to act even if there is another being in danger of being killed? Does art exist in such a different dimension that it releases us from our moral consciousness and objections? I find the way in which Burden questions the stability of the distinction between art and life is impressive. He achieves this by demolishing the gap psychologically constructed between the two. There is no gap between art and life, art is imagined. There is always only life and death. A dichotomy that Burden used to catapult himself into the art community of the 1970's.
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