June 11 (Bloomberg) -- There's a new skyscraper in Midtown Manhattan, and it's built entirely of Erector Set pieces. One- time shock artist Chris Burden's gleaming 65-foot-tall, temporary building at Rockefeller Center is a sweet, old-fashioned tribute to boyhood optimism.

A lot of kids fantasize about erecting edifices out of Lego and Erector sets; very few have the means and sheer stubbornness to actually do it as grown men.

Burden, 62, became notorious in the 1970s for his nutty, masochistic performance pieces, which were in part about simply seeing how far an artist could go. In 1971, for ``Shoot,'' he had a friend fire at his left arm with a 22-gauge rifle. Two years later, for ``Through the Night Softly,'' he crawled over broken glass, shirtless, his arms tied behind him.

What's shocking now is how much innocence a plain metal construction project can convey. The overgrown toy is titled ``What My Dad Gave Me'' (Burden's father was an engineer), and the sentimentality of the title is refreshing given how much rough stuff Burden took -- and doled out to audiences -- in the past.

Burden says he's still testing limits: No one has built such a huge Erector Set before. That's certainly true, but the shrunken skyscraper speaks more to the collective strength of many flimsy parts and the lifelong grip of childhood aspirations.

There's a nice narrative circularity to the placement of Burden's skyscraper at the heart of New York. The inventor of the Erector Set, A.C. Gilbert, was himself inspired to make a building toy for children, in 1909, by seeing the exposed steel girders of the New York skyscrapers under construction in the early 20th century.

Two Dozen Assistants

With more than two dozen assistants in his Los Angeles studio, Burden worked out the construction of his skyscraper from a million custom-fabricated Erector Set pieces. Cross braces in each cube make for a lace-like structure: Light pours in, but the center is dense.

The six-story building commissioned by the Public Art Fund also gives something of a performance itself, shimmering and shimmying into the skyline. Birds flit in and out. Tourists check its similarity to Rockefeller Center lurking behind it. Children reach out to touch the Erector Set pieces.

Potential Spidermen be warned, though: 24-hour guards are on hand to make sure no one tries to scale this minimalist salute to old-fashioned play.

Through July 19 at Rockefeller Center, 50th Street and Fifth Avenue. Information: http://www.publicartfund.org.

(Carly Berwick is an art critic for Bloomberg News. The opinions expressed are her own.)

To contact the writer of this story: Carly Berwick at cberwick@gmail.com.

Last Updated: June 11, 2008 00:01 EDT