Urban Light, by Chris Burden at LACMA
Chris Burden, the enfant terrible of the Southern California performance art scene in the 1970s challenged assumptions, expectations and long held beliefs in the arts community from the moment he abandoned the notion of becoming an architect and veered at full speed into the arts program at the University of California’s Irvine branch.
He was new to the arts and the arts program at Irvine was new. Neither one quite knew what this mash up of energy would produce. It was a turbulent time that had been stirred up by the Vietnam war, Nixon’s Watergate, the assassinations of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King, riots, protests, students being gunned down at Kent State, the war on drugs, the conservative backlash targeting women and more. All this contributed to a growing sense among this generation that not only can’t you trust authority but you can’t even rely on mass movements to make a difference.
The elation of Woodstock turned sour when four months later the Rolling Stones reportedly hired the Hells Angels to help with crowd control at a concert in Altamont, California. Relying on outlaw bikers to keep the peace and paying them with beer did not win the best idea award as chaos ensued resulting in the stabbing death of a young concert-goer by one of the Angels. To many this is when the youth quake of the ‘60s died.
This American death spiral left young people like Burden in an untethered state and for artists it posed questions about what one should do.
A new documentary, “Burden,” traces the groundbreaking choices Burden made as he instinctively tried to create attention getting work that defied conventions and expectations.
Landing at UC Irvine in a brand new program with adjunct professors who came from the art world like Larry Bell and Ed Moses, gave him the freedom to explore and find ways to express himself.
He got attention and started to attract a following with his take on performance art. Painting was abandoned and he turned his attention to creating a body as art series of events that earned him a reputation for being unique. Not everyone thought climbing into a small student locker and staying there for several days was art but they talked about it. He kept upping the ante.
People often say they’d take a bullet for someone. A flip and overly dramatic way to let someone know you’ve got their back. For Burden it meant actually taking a bullet. His most talked about performance piece “Shoot” was painstakingly rehearsed. He tapped a fellow artist, who’d had some training in the military, to take aim at him while he stood across a room. The plan was to just graze Burden’s left arm. Burden would stand rock still and the lone gunman would squeeze off one round while the performance was videotaped. Easy.
The best laid plans of mice, men and artists can go awry. The trigger was pulled and apparently the barrel shifted just enough so the bullet did a through and through. Which, if you’re going to be shot is the best way because you don’t want a bullet bouncing around inside you tearing up vital organs, nerves and bones. And they recommend, well recommend may not be the right word, but a clean shot to the arms and legs should result in the least amount of damage.
Even then, as we see in the film, you have to report that you’ve been shot. The police don’t like people fooling around with deadly weapons. Even hippie artists don’t get a pass.
So how do you top that? This became a dilemma and we see the quest for artistic growth gets derailed and choices delayed as copious amounts of drugs and booze mix with his desire to forge a new path. Just what that path will be is a challenging question. But it’s clear Burden didn’t want to get stuck doing the same thing.
The filmmakers spent several years talking to him about what motivated him and they reached out to people who knew Burden, worked with him or observed his ongoing metamorphosis. A rather stiff, traditionalist art critic is included in the lineup of interviews so we don’t drown in adulation. And there’s that former wife who clearly has seen the best and the worst.
His tormented, impatient and fixated desire pushes Burden to continue to break conventions and create work that gets attention.
His most famous contribution is made up of 202 old, but working, streetlights arrayed in the front of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA). This captivating display, “Urban Light,” has become the most photographed site in Los Angeles, just behind the Hollywood sign. It’s iconic and a magnet for people young and old, from all over the world who wander through the maze of lights and are transfixed by its magic.
Clearly the filmmakers, Timothy Marrinan and Richard Dewey, were swept up by the magic and the chaos that Burden created. You will be too.
Burden runs 90 minutes
It was the official Selection at the 2016 Tribeca Film Festival and 2016 Edinburgh International Film Festival.
It opens in New York on May 5 and in LA on May 12th.,