Sunday, June 8, 2008

Burden

There's a review by Randy Kennedy in the NY Times today about a big Erector Set toy skyscraper Chris Burden's made for Rockefeller Center. The piece does a chatty job of glossing Burden's extreme early body art works like getting shot and nailed to a car. Not at the same time, mind you.

After telling us he no longer does things like that. Kennedy adds a parenthetical: "He said he bore no physical infirmities from those years; one of his worst injuries came only a few years ago when he wrestled a coyote to the ground after it latched onto his dog. The coyote then latched onto his left hand and almost tore off part of a finger."

Sounds like a job for the ghost of Joseph Beuys.

Actually the toy skyscraper sounds like an engaging project. I need to get to New York, and not just for Burden's sculpture.

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