Shoot Favorite 

"I had an intuitive sense that being shot is as American as apple pie. We see people being shot on TV, we read about it in the newspaper. Everybody has wondered what it's like. So I did it." - Chris Burden

In light of his recent death, I wanted to bring one of Chris Burden's pieces, Shoot, to Actipedia.org. Not just to honor the artist, but to also remind us of our country's insane fascination with guns and violence.

Chris Burden Synopsis

Chris Burden has produced some of the most shocking works in the history of twentieth century American art, including spending five days and nights in the fetal position inside a locker, having a spectator push pins into his body, being "crucified" to a Volkswagen Beetle, being kicked down two flights of stairs, and even having himself shot. The challenge for viewers is to try to understand such troubling and seemingly "inartistic" gestures. Such an understanding is made possible by seeing these works within the context of Conceptual art during the 1970s, where artists concerned themselves with art based on ideas and action rather than objects created for an elite art market. Additionally, the violent images of the war in Vietnam and the television media in general provided a background setting for Burden. His work further challenges viewers to take stock of their own moral compasses and widen their understanding of the ways in which it is possible for art to serve humanity.

Chris Burden's Key Ideas

-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 artist 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 and dead American soldiers in Vietnam and the general dominance of violence in media imagery.

-Burden also questioned the role of art itself. Can art be more than something precious, elite, and distant? To what extent can the artist be the work of art and how far can the artist go in leading viewers to think and respond?

Shoot (1971)

Shoot is the piece for which Burden is infamously known. He asked a friend to shoot him with a .22 rifle from a distance of 15 feet. The bullet was originally supposed to nick the side of Burden's arm, but the shooter was slightly off target and the bullet went through the arm instead. This piece presented exactly what happens when a person is shot so that the audience could experience it in person, and not just in a detached setting such as watching the television while sitting comfortably on the couch. The viewer can only recoil in shock at realizing that an actual person was just shot in front of them. In describing the piece, Burden stated that "it was really disgusting, and there was a smoking hole in my arm." This work also poses questions about the nature of power and following orders, a theme especially indicated by the imperative of the title Shoot, itself. To what extent are we required to follow orders? What are the boundaries between rules and responsibility to fellow human beings? Burden's work was also a way of re-sensitizing people to the violence that had become less and less shocking due to its prevalence in the news. Finally, in addition to challenging the art world's traditional preference for the "fine art" of painting, for example, what Burden really seemed to be challenging was himself and his own dedication to his art. One cannot argue that someone who so consistently put himself in physical and mortal danger for his work was not completely dedicated to his art: in fact, Burden said that one of the reasons he performed Shoot was so that he would be taken seriously as an artist.