78. Chris Burden, Metropolis II
A hypnotic urban utopia
You hear Metropolis II before you see it. The massive model city fills a gallery, a Gordian knot of roadways and train tracks snaking through 10-foot towers of Legos and Lincoln Logs. 1,100 miniature cars race along tracks at 240 scale miles per hour in an endless loop. The noise, which artist Chris Burden called “white noise, like a river,” is deafening. It’s a model of urban energy, the ultimate car toy—one that a child wouldn’t have the time or resources to build.
And it seems like a complete reversal from Burden’s earlier work. In the early 1970s, he used his own body as unsettling sculptural material. He had someone shoot him in the arm. He was crucified to his Volkswagen Beetle. These were not stunts; they were his answer to the question of what sculpture is: “human action, movement, performance in a certain sense, [is] the core of sculpture.”
Likewise, Metropolis II is an irresistible performance of movement. Children love it, as do art critics. An artist who spent his early years doing performances that were hard to look at ended up making an object that hypnotizes.
But however playful it seems, the piece is in service of a vision: a future with driverless cars. Dave Hickey wrote, “Beauty is and always will be blue skies and open highway.”1 For Burden, Metropolis II predicted an end to traffic jams when humans no longer drive. He imagined a utopia of fast-moving, open highways under the blue skies of LA. Beautiful.
Links:
Speedy Toy Cars Blur The Boundaries Of Sculpture – Alex Schmidt, NPR Weekend Edition, January 15, 2012
What My Dad Gave Me, Burden’s Erector-Set skyscraper in Rockefeller Center: Public Art Fund, 2008
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This post is part of The American 250, a series featuring 250 words on 250 objects made by Americans, located in America, in honor of the country’s 250th anniversary. Through December 31, 2026.
I’m looking for ideas for this series — have something you’d like me to consider for inclusion? Please feel free to leave a comment!
From Hickey's book Invisible Dragon: Four Essays on Beauty (1993): https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/872030-beauty-is-and-always-will-be-blue-skies-and-open
Wow! What an energetic, ambitious vision! Thanks for this. I felt a tension between the fast lanes and the stalled lanes?!?!? And they call that "freedom of the road"?!
I just read this and watched the video…what an incredible sculpture you highlighted for me! Thank you!