Chris Burden

For twenty years there was no serious book on Chris Burden; this 416-page volume, edited in close collaboration with the artist, is the one that fixed his work in print.

Coordinated by curator Fred Hoffman in association with Gagosian Gallery, it is arranged thematically rather than chronologically, so that the early performances sit beside the later sculpture and reveal the conceptual argument running between them. There are 377 illustrations, 244 in colour, many carrying commentary by Burden himself, together with a catalogue of projects and publications from 1971 to 2005 and documentation of numerous works he never realised. Essays come from Lisa Le Feuvre on Ghost Ship, Paul Schimmel on the works on paper, Kristine Stiles on light, and Robert Storr, with Hoffman on the early years. Designed by Mark Thomson and printed in Florence.

Burden (1946–2015) made his name with the endurance and risk pieces of the early 1970s — Shoot, Trans-Fixed, Five Day Locker Piece — then spent four decades building machines, bridges, and city-scale sculptures that test power, engineering, and belief. Urban Light at LACMA is the best known.