1988.81 All the Submarines of the United States of America

Chris Burden's gallery-sized installation consists of 625 identical cardboard models that represent the entire United States submarine fleet dating from the late 1890s, when submarines entered the navy's arsenal, to the late 1980s. The wall behind them lists the names of each submarine in black sans-serif type. Burden designed this installation as an amalgam of elements rather than as a discrete project: he suspended the cardboard models from the ceiling, placing them at various heights so that as a group they appear, quite aptly, to be a school of fish swimming through the ocean of the gallery space. 

This piece neither celebrates nor condemns military might, but presents in physical form the full range and history of an essential component of the United States's power that, when this work was created, was still pitched in cold war struggle with the Soviet Union. Burden's work elicits questions and thoughts about security, politics, warfare, and history that become all the more resonant by his refusal of any easy polemical stance.

Charles Wylie, "All the Submarines in the United States of America," in Dallas Museum of Art: A Guide to the Collection, ed. Suzanne Kotz (Dallas: Dallas Museum of Art, 1997), 297.

Until 1988: Chris Burden (1946-2014)

1988: Dallas Museum of Art, purchased from Fred Hoffman Gallery, Santa Monica, California

Notes:

The main source for this provenance is the copy of the invoice document dated November 30, 1988, in the Collections Records object file (1988.81).