Chris Burden, who died on 10 May, aged 69, was an influential teacher, a maverick who played by his own rules, a fearless risk-taker, endlessly curious and also uncompromising and exacting. Burden was one of our most important artists, who over a period of more than 40 years traversed many different media and altered the course of art. Early on, he used his body as sculpture and left a legacy that continually pushed against limits, boundaries and constraints. There was constant tension in Burden’s work around the high risks and daunting challenges involved as he relentlessly tested the viewer, institutions and himself.
All of Burden’s art lives in a world of double binds and indeterminate realities, beyond simple truths and valences, binary rules and protocols, in a world where danger, poetry and absurdity collide, and struggles around power and control are ever present.
Child of the 1960s Burden came of age in the 60s, at a time of social upheaval and political ferment, when many young people had a deep ambivalence towards authority and long-held values, and were creating a counterculture in search of new truths and consciousness. The US was at a crossroads, and Chris Burden was there, questioning the American dream, working outside the system, searching for new truths, and giving form to this turning point. Extreme measures were one way to jolt the public out of complacency: civil rights and anti-war protests, race riots and mind-altering drugs all provided an outlet for discontent, anger and a mistrust of power structures. Burden countered the violence of assassinations, massacres and senseless aggression with performances that physicalised the pain of a nation.
He immensely disliked being called the Evel Knievel of art, or a daredevil, or a “shock artist”—he was not after sensationalism. Each of his performances had the logic of an action conceived in relation to a specific cultural backdrop. They stood as a commentary on the culture of violence as played out in the media, the military and in families. They pointed up the unstable nature of value, and the question of what is right and wrong.
Monumental installation
It was a great honour to work with Burden closely over several years to realise his most extensive exhibition at the New Museum, New York (October 2013 to January 2014), including a monumental installation (still on view) of the Twin Quasi-Legal Skyscrapers on the museum’s roof, and of the Ghost Ship on its façade. He had hoped these works would alter the cityscape of downtown from Broadway down Prince Street. Quasi-Legal Skyscrapers would catch the western light at sunset. Travelling into Manhattan from the east over the Williamsburg Bridge, they suddenly pop into view, creating a very different roof-scape from their surroundings—and a jolting reminder of the lost Twin Towers, lives lost and the lasting wound.
Of course, we did not know if we would get the permits to install these works on the exterior, or if we could surmount the installation and structural challenges. We did not know if we would be able to secure the 40m of gold for the Tower of Power (a real test), or if we would be able to complete the complex restoration of the Tale of Two Cities in time. There were never any guarantees, just plenty of cliffhangers and hurdles to jump. Each work was a test of our limits, endurance and commitment.
Burden was at home in Topanga, where he presided over his own Xanadu at the end of a long road to a remote stretch high above Los Angeles. It was another world—of ranchers, cowboys, indie film stars, hippies and porn producers, where packs of coyotes roam and fruit orchards rub up against hardscrabble cliffs. A beehive bunker is a beacon on high, signalling that something unusual is going on, but also saying “keep out”.
In this wild place of craggy peaks and animals, Burden could work relatively undisturbed. The property was vast enough to hold a growing collection of planes, trains and automobiles, not to mention street lamps and other raw material for future sculpture as well as finished works. In his studio, he was joined every day by a talented crew of fellow artists, who helped him to execute his carefully researched and tightly engineered structures, which most often explored building principles and formulas, matters of perception or physics.
Chris loved his studio and his team, the orchard, his dogs, walking the ridge, and his life partner, Nancy Rubins. He died in a place he loved, a place where he generously offered up avocados to all who made the trek, including the local postman and service people who dropped by, and where, during my last visit, he was ordering Mississippi paddle boats, to be shipped up the mountain.
• The writer is the Toby Devan Lewis director of the New Museum, New York