Los Angeles conceptual artist Chris Burden died over the weekend in his Topanga home. He was 69. Burden is best known for his piece “Urban Light,” the collection of street lights in front of LACMA that look like the Parthenon. But he began his career as an outrageous performance artist. For his master’s thesis at UC Irvine, Burden shut himself into a two-by-three foot school locker for five days. In 1975, at Chicago’s Museum of Contemporary Art, he lay completely still for 45 hours under a sheet of glass and next to a ticking clock. But the piece that caused the biggest uproar at the time was titled “Shoot.” In it he had himself shot in the arm by a friend with a rifle. We look back at Burden’s life and work.
You can revisit KCRW's interview with Chris Burden for Design and Architecture here.