747 (performance art)

[citation needed] Burden was later interviewed by the Federal Bureau of Investigation after a photograph of the piece was published in a magazine; a calling card was left by the FBI at his studio.A meeting subsequently took place at his lawyer's house, where he explained the nature of Burden's work in performance art to a FBI agent who conclusively agreed to call off any further investigation.Burden said in a 1980 interview with David Robbins that he additionally explained to the FBI that the piece was "about the goodness of man — the idea that you can't regulate everybody.Cottom identifies the piece as belonging to the Western European artistic tradition of "misanthropy", feeling that Burden "committed an artwork of terrific suggestiveness" when he fired the gun at the airplane.[4][5] English critic Dominic Johnson wrote of the piece, in his 2018 book Unlimited Action: The Performance of Extremity in the 1970s, that the "threat of criminal damage, mass death and personal ignominy ground the formal challenge that confirms the action as a performance [...] Uncertainty, notoriety and doubt form part of a work's existential charm".