Bio

Chris Burden was a performance artist born in Boston in 1946 and grew up in France and Italy. When he was 12 years old Burden was involved in a motorcycle accident in Italy that required his foot to be operated on without anesthesia. This traumatic event is believed be the catalyst for his future works that focused on self-inflicted physical pain.In 1965, Burden had moved to California to study physics and architecture before receiving his B.F.A from Pomona College in 1969 and his M.F.A. from the University of California at Irvine in 1971,where one of his teachers had been the artist Robert Irwin. Burden began his performance pieces while still in college, and his master's thesis was Burden consisting of him shutting himself in a locker for five days without food, only with a five-gallon jug of water above him and an empty five-gallon jug below him for waste. Burden was excited about the idea that his body and his actions could be considered a work of art with little or no other materials involved. This early performance set the tone for the types of works Burden would become famous. His pieces were usually done in front of a small audience who had heard of the event by word-of-mouth; as Burden did not advertise in advance of his performances. Chris Burden passed away on May 10th 2015.