44 Years After Shooting Himself in the Arm, Remembering Artist Chris Burden

• Josh White / Gagosian Gallery
• Chris Burden

The conceptual artist Chris Burden died last week, 44 years after getting shot in the arm for art. One of performance art’s forerunners, Burden leaves behind a legacy of boundary-pushing, occasionally bleakly playful pieces. His early work was odd and violent and self-destructive—take “Five Day Locker Piece,” which found Burden confining himself within a two-foot tall, two-foot wide, three-foot deep school locker.

But “Shoot”—the piece where Burden was shot in the arm by a friend—is arguably his most iconic, and for good reason. Plenty of similar performance art’s emerged since that performance, but he was one of the first artists around to make such objectively bad decisions for his work. And along with Marina Abromovic’s early work, I can’t think of an artist besides Burden who crops up so often as a gateway to conceptual art.

The footage of Burden getting shot is brief (like eight seconds brief) and not particularly graphic, but it’s especially jarring to watch because the film opens with Burden himself describing what’s about to be shown—with a goobery, almost casual delivery. He sounds almost like a teenage boy. Here’s what he says:

In “Shoot,” I’m shot in the upper lefthand arm by a friend of mine with a .22 rifle. The only visuals I have of this piece is a very short film clip—about eight seconds long, so I’m going to begin the piece with an audiotape that was made during the actual performance. In the audiotape, some of the things to listen for are, “Do you know where you’re going to stand, Bruce?” Then later, right before the film clip happens, you’ll hear me say, “Are you ready?” Then you’ll hear the clicking of the Super 8 camera. Later after the clip is over, another thing to listen for is the sound of the empty shell dropping on the con…crete floor. Okay, so I think we could go right into the audiotape.

And here’s the video:

Burden went on to work in large-scale sculpture. In 2008, he installed 202 streetlights outside the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.