Chris Burden. (First Break).(Brief Article)

Jan Tumlir looks back at the shot heard round the art world--Chris Burden's 1971 performance piece, Shoot.

HAVING TRUDGED THROUGH the muted reliquary that was Paul Schimmel's 1998 survey "Out of Actions" at LA MOCA, one local critic closed his review with the complaint, "You had to be there." These familiar words of apology gain a particular poignancy when applied to the works of Chris Burden, which coax an often devastating lyricism from the discrepancy between an intense action and its openly insufficient record. Nowhere is this more evident than in the ...

Read the rest of this article with a Free Trial at HighBeam Research.