Chris Burden, an artist known for his extreme performance art in his youth - with performances that included shooting himself in the arm with a rifle and crucifying himself on a VW Bug - has died at the age of 69 in Los Angeles. Later in his life, Burden became more well known for his sculptural works, like the famous streetlamp installation outside of LACMA and Porsche with Meteorite, which is on view now at Gagosian Gallery in Paris. Burden has made an indelible mark on the history of art and he will be an enduring symbol and spirit of how far bravery, imagination and a little pain can take the artist.
Performance Art: Chris Burden
"747" January 5, 1973 Los Angeles, California, at about 8am at a beach near the Los Angeles International Airport, I fired several shots with a pistol at a Boeing 747.
In 1971, during one of his most famous pieces, Chris Burden had his assistant shoot him in the arm from a distance of 5 meters with a riffle. “At 7:45 P.M. I was shot in the left arm by a friend. The bullet was a copper jacket .22 long rifle. My friend was standing about fifteen feet from me.” His life is seemingly an extreme case of Dadaist impulses and an insatiable thirst for danger; as well as the warm hard-on milking of the brain for adrenaline. Burden currently lives and works in Los Angeles. You can find a book, an overview, of his works, here.