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Scott Burton

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Scott Burton
Born(1939-06-23)June 23, 1939
Greensboro, Alabama
DiedDecember 29, 1989(1989-12-29) (aged 50)
New York City, New York, U.S.
EducationWashington Workshop Center,
Hans Hofmann School of Fine Arts
Alma mater
Known forPublic Sculpture

Scott Burton (June 23, 1939 – December 29, 1989) was an American sculptor and performance artist best known for his large-scale furniture sculptures in granite and bronze.

Early years

Burton was born in Greensboro, Alabama to Walter Scott Burton Jr. and Hortense Mobley Burton. While Burton was a child, his parents separated and Burton relocated to Washington, DC. with his mother.

Burton began his artistic career at the Washington Workshop Center in Washington D.C. in the mid-1950s under Leon Berkowitz,[1] before progressing to the Hans Hofmann School of Fine Arts in Provincetown, Massachusetts. Between 1959 and 1962 Burton took classes at Goddard College in Plainfield, Vermont, George Washington University in Washington, D.C., Harvard University, and Columbia University, where he finally received his bachelor's degree.[2]

In 1963 Burton was awarded a Master of Fine Arts degree from New York University in New York City.[3]

Art career

Copper Pedestal Table by Scott Burton, 1981–83, copper-plated bronze, Honolulu Museum of Art

During his decade-long relationship with the painter John Button in the 1960s, Burton was introduced to the social networks of the art, dance, and theater communities of New York. He came to meet, among others, Edward Albee, Jerome Robbins, Lincoln Kirstein, and Alex Katz.

Throughout the 1960s, Burton attempted to be a playwright and librettist, but in 1965 started writing art criticism. In 1966, he began as an editorial associate at ARTnews, eventually becoming an editor. He wrote a substantial amount of art criticism in the late 1960s in this role, including the introduction to the pivotal exhibition Live in Your Head: When Attitudes Become Form at the Kunsthalle Berne.[4]

Rock Settee (1988) at the National Gallery of Art in 2022

Starting in 1969, he began to make performance art, first contributing to the "Street Works" events held in 1969 (and featuring such artists as Vito Acconci and Eduardo Costa). Throughout the 1970s, Burton was known mostly as an art critic and performance artist. In 1972, he showed his Group Behavior Tableaux performance at the Whitney Museum of American Art, and went on to stage other tableaux performances at such venues as the Guggenheim, Documenta, and the Berkeley Art Museum. These performances explored nonverbal communication, interpersonal power dynamics, and body language. They were informed by his study of behavioral psychology as well as his participation in the nonverbal signaling of desire in street cruising.[5] During the 1970s, Burton also made other performance works and installations that were explicit in their commitments to gay liberation. For example, in the 1976 exhibition Rooms at P.S.1 in New York, Burton exhibited an installation featuring a fisting dildo and dedicated to "homosexual liberation."[6]

Burton began incorporating furniture into his work as early as 1970, and it would grow from being an active participant in his performances to his main area of output in the 1980s. He first began making sculptures in 1972, but would not exhibit them until his appearance in the Whitney Biennial in 1975 and, later that year, in a solo exhibition at Artists Space, NYC. Much of his earliest work involved subtly modified found furniture. He made his first sculpture by painting a found Queen Anne revival style chair the color of bronze in 1972, and with the help of a grant was able to have it cast in bronze in 1975, when Bronze Chair was shown across the street from Artists Space during his December 1975 exhibition.

Through the remaining 1970s, Burton would continue to create performance art pieces and, increasingly, sculpture. It was public art that caught his imagination, and starting in 1979 he began to reconsider his role as an artist by making works of functional furniture-as-sculpture (pragmatic sculpture, he called it) that were meant to be largely anonymous, invisible, and woven into the fabric of the everyday.

In the 1980s, he became known primarily as a sculptor of refined sculptures of furniture and ambitious and useful interventions in public space.[7] His "tables" and "chairs" challenge the distinction between furniture and sculpture. Two-Part Chairs, Right Angle Version (a Pair), (1983-87), represents this concept aptly. The interlocking granite chairs can found at the Western Washington University Public Sculpture Collection. One version, Two-Part Chair (1986) embeds hidden queer experiences, while also serving as a functional chair. The two parts of the chair are mutually supportive, neither part can stand without the other. As David Getsy has discussed, its two interlocking granite pieces represent two highly abstracted figures, posed in a sexual position.[8] Copper Pedestal Table from 1981 to 1983, in the collection of the Honolulu Museum of Art, is an example of such a "table". It is as much a minimalist sculpture as it is a table.

One of Burton's primary artistic concerns was the dissolution of aesthetic boundaries, especially the traditional boundary between fine art and utilitarian design. The art historian Robert Rosenblum described Burton as "...singular and unique as a person as he was as an artist. His fiercely laconic work destroyed the boundaries between furniture and sculpture, between private delectation and public use and radically altered the way we see many 20th-century masters, including Gerrit Rietveld and Brâncuși."[9]

Many of Burton's most important public site-specific works are endangered, and some have been destroyed through removal, including the Atrium Furnishment that was designed for the interior of the AXA Equitable Center, 1281 Sixth Avenue, New York.[10] At present, only the exterior elements of the major site-specific work remain. Some components have been re-imagined in other exhibitions as a means to bring attention to the loss of Burton's work.[11]

Death

Burton died of complications due to AIDS on December 29, 1989, at Cabrini Medical Center in New York City. He was survived by his partner, Jonathan Erlitz, who died in 1998.[9]

Notable works in public collections

See also

References

  1. ^ "Scott Burton Papers in The Museum of Modern Art Archives". Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). Retrieved 2021-09-01.
  2. ^ Columbia College (Columbia University). Office of Alumni Affairs and Development; Columbia College (Columbia University) (1990). Columbia College today. Columbia University Libraries. New York, N.Y. : Columbia College, Office of Alumni Affairs and Development.
  3. ^ "Scott Burton Papers, Museum of Modern Art". Moma.org. Retrieved 2012-08-13.
  4. ^ "David Getsy, ed., Scott Burton: Collected Writings on Art and Performance, 1965-1975 (Chicago: Soberscove Press, 2012)". Archived from the original on 2020-03-25. Retrieved 2012-11-03.
  5. ^ Getsy, David (2022). Queer Behavior: Scott Burton and Performance Art. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ISBN 9780226817064.
  6. ^ Getsy, David (2022). Queer Behavior: Scott Burton and Performance Art. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. pp. 211–18. ISBN 9780226817064.
  7. ^ Getsy, David. "Scott Burton's Public Sculptures". Burlington Contemporary.
  8. ^ Getsy in Jonathan Weinberg; Tyler Cann; Anastasia Kinigopoulo; Drew Sawyer; Christopher Reed; Flavia Rando, eds. (2019). Art after Stonewall : 1969-1989. Columbus Museum of Art. pp. 132–33. ISBN 978-0-8478-6406-5. OCLC 1045161395.
  9. ^ a b Smith, Roberta (1 January 1990). "Scott Burton, Sculptor Whose Art Verged on Furniture, Is Dead at 50". The New York Times. p. 26. Retrieved 31 March 2011.
  10. ^ "Scott Burton & the Equitable Center".
  11. ^ "Scott Burton's Atrium Furnishment".
  12. ^ "Public Table". Princeton University Art Museum. Princeton University. Archived from the original on 14 October 2021. Retrieved 8 August 2022.
  13. ^ "Chair". AMAM. Oberlin College. Archived from the original on 8 August 2022. Retrieved 8 August 2022.
  14. ^ "Untitled (Red/Yellow/Blue Cube)". MOCA. Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. Archived from the original on 18 September 2020. Retrieved 8 August 2022.
  15. ^ "Pair of Rock Chairs". MoMA. Museum of Modern Art. Archived from the original on 14 May 2021. Retrieved 8 August 2022.
  16. ^ "Aluminum Chair". MoMA. Museum of Modern Art. Archived from the original on 19 April 2021. Retrieved 8 August 2022.
  17. ^ "Rock Chair". PhilaMuseum. Philadelphia Museum of Art. Archived from the original on 8 August 2022. Retrieved 8 August 2022.
  18. ^ "Lava Rock Chair". LACMA. Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Archived from the original on 8 August 2022. Retrieved 8 August 2022.
  19. ^ "Asymmetrical Settee". Tate. Tate. Archived from the original on 8 August 2022. Retrieved 8 August 2022.
  20. ^ "Pair of One Part Chairs". CCS Bard. Bard College. Archived from the original on 8 August 2022. Retrieved 8 August 2022.
  21. ^ "Two-Part Chairs, Obtuse Angle (A Pair)". Walker Art. Walker Art Center. Archived from the original on 25 September 2016. Retrieved 8 August 2022.
  22. ^ "Pair of Two-Part Chairs, Obtuse Angle". Whitney. Whitney Museum of American Art. Archived from the original on 4 July 2021. Retrieved 8 August 2022.
  23. ^ "Untitled - half-sized Maquette". SAAM. Smithsonian Institution. Archived from the original on 8 August 2022. Retrieved 8 August 2022.
  24. ^ "Seating for Eight". ArtIC. Art Institute of Chicago. 1985. Archived from the original on 6 March 2021. Retrieved 8 August 2022.
  25. ^ "Settee, Bench, and Balustrade". List Art. Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 13 January 2022. Archived from the original on 4 July 2022. Retrieved 8 August 2022.
  26. ^ "Low Piece (Bench)". ArtIC. Art Institute of Chicago. 1985. Archived from the original on 6 March 2021. Retrieved 8 August 2022.
  27. ^ "Six-Part Seating". NGA. National Gallery of Art. 1998. Archived from the original on 7 July 2022. Retrieved 8 August 2022.
  28. ^ "Sandstone Bench". Des Moines Art Center. Des Moines Art Center. Archived from the original on 8 August 2022. Retrieved 8 August 2022.
  29. ^ "Three-Quarter Cube Bench". MCA Chicago. Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago. Archived from the original on 8 August 2022. Retrieved 8 August 2022.
  30. ^ "Seat-Leg Table". Walker Art. Walker Art Center. Archived from the original on 29 March 2022. Retrieved 8 August 2022.
  31. ^ "Two-part Chaise Lounge". PhilaMuseum. Philadelphia Museum of Art. Archived from the original on 8 August 2022. Retrieved 8 August 2022.
  32. ^ "Settee". The Broad. The Broad. Archived from the original on 22 January 2021. Retrieved 8 August 2022.
  33. ^ "Pair of Parallelogram Chairs". Yale University Art Gallery. Yale University. Archived from the original on 14 May 2021. Retrieved 8 August 2022.
  34. ^ "Scott Burton: Two Part Chairs, Right Angle Version (a Pair)". WWU Art. Western Washington University. Archived from the original on 8 August 2022. Retrieved 8 August 2022.
  35. ^ "Two-Part Bench (a pair)". SFMoMA. San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Archived from the original on 8 August 2022. Retrieved 8 August 2022.
  36. ^ "Rock Settee". NGA. National Gallery of Art. 1988. Archived from the original on 17 September 2021. Retrieved 8 August 2022.
  37. ^ "Rock Settee". NGA. National Gallery of Art. 1988. Archived from the original on 22 July 2022. Retrieved 8 August 2022.
  38. ^ "Bench and Table". UChicago Arts. University of Chicago. Archived from the original on 20 September 2021. Retrieved 8 August 2022.
  39. ^ "Pair of Steel Chairs". Anderson Collection. Stanford University. Archived from the original on 30 April 2022. Retrieved 8 August 2022.
  40. ^ "Chair and Table". CMoA. Carnegie Museum of Art. Archived from the original on 8 August 2022. Retrieved 8 August 2022.
  41. ^ "Bench and Table". Middlebury College Museum of Art. Middlebury College. Archived from the original on 8 August 2022. Retrieved 8 August 2022.
  42. ^ "Perforated Metal Settee and Perforated Metal Chairs". MoMA. Museum of Modern Art. Archived from the original on 3 August 2021. Retrieved 8 August 2022.
  43. ^ "Bench and Table". The Broad. The Broad. Archived from the original on 19 January 2021. Retrieved 8 August 2022.
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