Real Scale Section From The Sex Tower

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Real Scale Section From The Sex Tower

1987
Sculpture
Douglas fir bundle with glue
102 × 22 × 22 in. (259.08 × 55.88 × 55.88 cm)
Gift of Robert and Mary M. Looker (M.2017.1.3)
Contemporary Art
Not currently on public view

Curator Notes

Chris Burden envisaged The Sex Tower in 1986 as a 125-foot-tall monument referencing fertility icons, church steeples, Minimalist sculpture, and Postmodernist architecture....
Chris Burden envisaged The Sex Tower in 1986 as a 125-foot-tall monument referencing fertility icons, church steeples, Minimalist sculpture, and Postmodernist architecture. The lower portion was to be built out of 6x6-inch timbers (in bundles of four at the bottom, narrowing to single timbers at the top) joined by 900 bolts. The pointed top 25 feet of The Sex Tower were to be covered in gold leaf; this gilded tip would pierce a tubular ring 12 feet in diameter, likewise covered in gold leaf. Though the monument was never realized, Burden did make this full-scale section of the lower portion of The Sex Tower in 1987. Real Scale Section from The Sex Tower, like the proposed Sex Tower itself, plays on forms out of cultural and art history ranging from Hindu lingams to Carl Andre’s Minimalist sculptures made of raw wood.
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Bibliography

  • Gifts from Mary and Robert Looker, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, December 2017. Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 2017.