'Deadman': the art piece that faked a murder

For any aspiring artist, nothing will stand in the way of translating the ideas in one's head onto the canvas. When creative types are just finding their calling, it's always about that hard work paying off when the finished product can be set on display for the world to see. Performance art is a bit of a different beast, however, and Chris Burden had enough determination in his art to earn himself a prison cell.

In the early 1970s, Burden's different performance art pieces were the stuff of legend in the Los Angeles community. Although he always had complex ways of working around bodily harm, some of his most intense art pieces always had a message to them, like his showcase Shoot, where one of his assistants shot him several times in the arm.

After making different borderline-masochistic art pieces on his own body, Burden decided to venture into the real world for his 1972 Deadman. Donning a tarp over his body, Burden's vision was to stay on the ground of La Cienega Blvd to simulate the image of a dead body left on the side of the road. For added effect and out of respect to any cars passing by, Burden also added light flares on either side of his body for people to steer clear of him.

Though this might have been a bit more interactive than his previous performance pieces, Burden got into trouble when police were called down to the site, with some viewers thinking they had actually stumbled across a corpse. As Burden explained to A Modern Matter, the cops weren't exactly thrilled to find him on the street, recalling, "The cops are expecting to see a dead body mangled. So they pick up the corner of the tarp, and they lift it off. They don't want to see a dead, mangled traffic victim. They can see that my eyes are working. So they said, ‘What are you doing? What happened?’ I said, ‘I’m making an art performance…’ They said, ‘We’re arresting you.’ So they arrested me, and I went to the Hollywood jail."

While they originally wanted to stop Burden's show for faking a murder, that argument wasn't as successful when they went to court. Even though what Burden had done may have certainly been macabre for the time, there was no wrongdoing committed on the scene. As lawyer Jim Butler explained, "La Cienega is a known art gallery street. The roads aren't just made for cars. They’re made for people to walk on, for bicycles, for horses. So they’re multipurpose, and they can also be used to make art in. Mr. Burden was not trying to call a false emergency. His intent was to make an artwork."

For the ’70s art scene, though, what Burden was making was far more ambitious than any of his contemporaries. Although the piece may have struck fear or disgust in some of the viewers, the purpose was to get people to think about their place in this supposed situation, wondering what someone would do if they were to come across something like that on the side of a highway.

Seeing how most of the justice system was more concerned about the laws behind such an act, Burden was opening the audience's minds to what humanity's view of death is.