BURDEN, documentary, not rated, Center for Contemporary Arts,

In December 1974, artist Chris Burden appeared on a Los Angeles talk show hosted by Regis Philbin. Their exchange went as such:

Philbin: As a piece of sculpture, you allowed someone to shoot you? With a gun? And in your mind, that was the sculpture — the result of you being shot. Burden: No, just the moment when I was being shot was the sculpture. Just that incident when the bullet traveled from the gun into my arm. Philbin: And was it worth it? Burden: Yeah, it was a good piece. Philbin: Yeah, but who can appreciate it? Burden: You do. I mean, that’s why I’m here.

In the ’70s, Burden became known as “the Evel Knievel of the art world” for his provocative performance pieces like 1971’s in which he was shot in his left arm by an assistant with a .22 rifle. His matter-of-fact disregard for boundaries, especially between the viewer and the artist, changed the landscape of contemporary art, as he endured fire, electrocution, and crucifixion in the name of artistic expression. Richard Dewey and Timothy Marrinan’s engrossing documentary portrait of Burden, who died in 2015, explores his innovations, underscoring a legacy that has clearly influenced artists and performers, for better or worse, from Marina Abramovic´ to David Blaine to Shia LeBeouf.

The film, which has a pleasantly punk sensibility that is heightened by its soundtrack, frames the narrative around Burden’s most striking works. His early body art — in which performances centered around putting himself in physical duress or danger — began with the 1971 piece he created for his master’s thesis at the University of California, Irvine, where he folded himself into a locker and remained there for five consecutive days. Increasing derring-do on the artist’s part culminated in 1974’s in which Burden lay face-up on the back of a Volkswagen Beetle on Speedway Avenue in Venice and had nails hammered into his hands as if he were being crucified on the car. “Nail me to my car and I’ll tell you who you are,” sang David Bowie on his album, in tribute to Burden’s act.

In an early interview, Burden characterizes his work as a reaction to an inflated art market; by creating art that couldn’t be bought or sold, he was angling at gaining some kind of personal control, as well as focusing on universal human emotions of fear and pain, along with the concept of martyrdom. His pieces created lasting impressions about the place of performance art among what critic Brian Sewell, in the film, calls the more traditional and acceptable “ancestral forms of art,” like painting and sculpture. The iconoclasm of Burden’s thinking comes through in interviews with an array of artists and critics, including Ed Ruscha, Abramovic´ , and art critic Peter Schjeldahl. Of one elemental work in which Burden lay bolted to the floor of a gallery near two buckets of water with live 110-volt lines submerged in them — a setup that dared the visitor to knock over the buckets and electrocute him — Schjeldahl says, “It was kind of a science-fair aspect combined with something really sinister.”

Footage of Burden, from archived interviews to more recent traipsings around his Topanga Canyon studio, provides the best insight into the artist’s shifting preoccupations. He called his body works “sculptures,” focusing on the idea of making the viewer a more active participant in the piece — and as his career progressed into the ’80s and ’90s, he began to focus exclusively on creating objects and increasingly elaborate installations. The result is a compelling maturation of Burden’s work, and it’s a joy to watch this evolution play out in the film.

restaurant critic Jonathan Gold, who worked as Burden’s assistant at UCLA in the late ’70s, even characterizes his stature in the city’s post-millennial art world as “beloved” and “cuddly” — a far cry from the he was regarded as in the ’70s.

Another interviewee points to Burden as someone who not only crossed a line, but who was interested in moving that line. His legacy is thus, of distinct and fascinating works that celebrate the boundlessness of art — a fearless notion that, somewhat paradoxically, also offers great comfort. — Molly Boyle