Chris Burden; Annotated Bibliography

You'll Never see My Face in Kansas City 1971

Morgan Gallery, Kansas City, Missouri, USA; November 6, 1971

Bewley, Jon and Jonty Tarbuck, Edit's. Chris Burden (United Kingdom, Thames & Hudson) 2007 

This monographic study compiled in association with Burden provides a useful and vast overview of burdens work spanning from 1971 to 2006. The explanations accompanying each work (provided by Burden personally) provide an in depth explanation as to the intentions and actions undertook during each performance (earlier works) and also the material orientated installations (later practice) . I felt that this in contrast with the accompanying 5 texts confusing at first. How ever after consideration and re-reading this document to helped me to break away from the word of the artist himself. I also felt that the separation of the works under titled themes was interesting in allowing me to see correlation in works that span Burdens whole career, as in to say that it allowed me to tie his body of work as a cohesive progression when before it seemed segmented and non linear.

Horvitz, Robert. “Chris Burden.” Artforum Volume XIV No.9 (1976): 24-31

This article provided an extremely helpful look at Burden from his beginnings of the utilization of minimalist practice and how by chance he discovered the activation of artworks via the human body. The analysis of Burdens performances against his dead pan statements and often obscure titles (such as White Light/White Heat that in the article we discover apparently refers to the velvet underground song of the same name) allowed me to break free of the word of the artist and embrace a personal opinion surrounding issues of politics, religion and (of course) ones body. How ever due to the publish date (1976) it does fall short in areas of Burdens progression back to the (art) object and his critic of technology.

Morris, Francis. Chris Burden: When Robots Rule: The Two-Minute Airplane Factory. London: Tate Gallery, 1999.

Although the title may elude to a specific exhibition it proved to be an extremely helpful resource in defining Burden’s chronology of practice. Interpretations of works are made but are also followed by directly quoted statements from the artist himself which serve to provide an alternate. This is fundamental as in trying to analyze Burdens works many interpretations (mainly alluding to religion, politics, technology and money) can be drawn.  The use of such a dialogue served as a point of understanding for myself when observing and considering, it drew attention as to how ones objective may be clear in their head a viewer can take another reading away from this. The Section directly written by Morris played a key role in my understanding of the difference between documentation and Burdens own construct of the 'relic'.

UBU web "A Twenty-Year Survey, Newport Harbor Art Museum - A Video Portrait (1989)." Accessed May 5 http://www.ubu.com/film/burden_newport.html

A great documentary surrounding Burdens practice. How ever like a lot of information sourced it is quite intensive with Burdens presence and thoughts. I felt this to be detrimental as it does or did not serve to allow for critical engagement of the artist practice.