Chris Burden was a famous artist in the early 1970’s. He is well known for his jaw dropping performances such as Shoot. “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 performances were shocking and daring.
Burden would do what most people would never dare to do. He would endure pain, which is what most people try to avoid. “Chris Burden’s seemingly outrageous performances were in fact authentically intentioned. His art explores the nature of suffering by setting up extreme situations that he, himself, has to endure. Theoretically, a viewer can interrupt the work at any point, but usually they do not; thus, his work challenges viewers themselves to act – both within the sphere of his art and within the larger context of humanity in general” -the art story.
Throughout this time in history the Vietnam War was being fought. Soldiers fighting for our lives. Innocent people dying left and right. “More than 3 million people, including 58,000 Americans, were killed in the conflict”. This was the first war to ever be televised in history. The public was able to see the tragedy that was happening. Burden tried to tie his performances into the Vietnam war in a sense that pain and suffering was real. He “wanted to portray the reality of pain to the audience at a time when people had become desensitized to the plethora of television images of injured an
d dead American soldiers in Vietnam and the general dominance of violence in media imagery”- the art story. In class we talked about the difference between being a hero and being a terrorist. The difference between a soldier and a murder. Chris Burden thought about these differences too and tied them into his paintings. He wanted to prove that no matter who you are, the hero or the terrorist, the murderer or the soldier, pain is pain. Everyone goes through pain and suffering in their lives. The thing that separates us from one another is how we go about expressing that pain and suffering. How we chose to deal with it. That is what makes us a hero or a terrorist. A murderer or a soldier.
http://www.history.com/topics/vietnam-war
http://www.jstor.org/stable/779202?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents