Chris Burden, Metropolis II, 2011. This sculpture will be on view at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art later this fall.
This week’s Modern Art Notes Podcast features artist Chris Burden and Baltimore Museum of Art curator Kristen Hileman. You can download/listen to an MP3 of the program here or subscribe to the RSS feed here. As soon as iTunes ‘approves’ the program, I’ll add a link to to there as well. (I’ll do a stand-alone post on that too.)
A star of the Getty-funded Pacific Standard Time series of exhibitions and related scholarship — only John Baldessari and Ed Ruscha are included in more PST shows — Burden is one of our most important artists. His Urban Light (2008) at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art is arguably America’s most popular public artwork. Later this fall, LACMA will open a second major Burden installation: Metropolis II (which is on a 10-year loan to the institution from a private collector). In 2008 Burden installed What My Dad Gave Me, a six-story sculptural installation commissioned by the Public Art Fund, at Rockefeller Center in 2008. He has been the subject of several retrospective exhibitions, including in 1988 at the Newport Harbor Art Museum, and at the MAK-Austrian Museum of Applied Arts, Vienna in 1996.
Among the highlights of our conversation:
- Burden explains how Metropolis II was made;
- He explains how his 'moon satellite’ is becoming more possible;
- He addresses whether or not he would re-perform his iconic early 1970s performances;
- We learn what kinds of fantastic and unexpected objects are lying around his southern California studio and property; and
- What role risk plays in his art now.
In the program’s second segment, Hileman and I discuss our favorite long-term installations at American art museums. Next year, the BMA will unveil a major new Sarah Oppenheimer installation.
Special thanks to this weeks’ advertisers: The Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, The Menil Collection, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston and the Amon Carter Museum of American Art. This week’s banner includes Burden’s The Big Wheel (1979), from the collection of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles.
Check back throughout the week for more images and video!
Image: Erich Koyama, courtesy the Chris Burden Studio and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.
