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 Bronze is an alloy consisting primarily of copper, commonly with about 12–12.5% tin and often with the addition of other metals (including aluminium, manganese, nickel, or zinc) and sometimes non-metals, such as phosphorus, or metalloids such ...

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. ) , image_skyline = , image_caption = Clockwise from top left: the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall, United States Capitol, Logan Circle, Jefferson Memorial, White House, Adams Morgan, Na ...

with his mother. Burton began his artistic career at the Washington Workshop Center in Washington D.C. in the mid-1950s under Leon Berkowitz, before progressing to the

Hans Hofmann Hans Hofmann (March 21, 1880 – February 17, 1966) was a German-born American painter, renowned as both an artist and teacher. His career spanned two generations and two continents, and is considered to have both preceded and influenced Abstrac ...

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. In 1963 Burton was awarded a

Master of Fine Arts A Master of Fine Arts (MFA or M.F.A.) is a terminal degree in fine arts, including visual arts, creative writing, graphic design, photography, filmmaking, dance, theatre, other performing arts and in some cases, theatre management or arts admini ...

degree from New York University in New York City.

Art career

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 Edward Franklin Albee III ( ; March 12, 1928 – September 16, 2016) was an American playwright known for works such as ''The Zoo Story'' (1958), '' The Sandbox'' (1959), ''Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?'' (1962), '' A Delicate Balance'' (1966) ...

, Jerome Robbins,

Lincoln Kirstein Lincoln Edward Kirstein (May 4, 1907 – January 5, 1996) was an American writer, impresario, art connoisseur, philanthropist, and cultural figure in New York City, noted especially as co-founder of the New York City Ballet. He developed and sus ...

, 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. 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. He 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. He first realized his sculptures in 1975, culminating in his exhibition at Artists Space in New York, where he showed his ''Bronze Chair.'' Through the remaining 1970s, Burton would continue to create performance art pieces and, increasingly, sculpture and public art. 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 sculptural furniture and ambitious and useful interventions in public space. 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. Its two interlocking granite pieces represent two highly abstracted figures, posed in a sexual position. The two parts of the chair are mutually supportive, neither part can stand without the other. ''Copper Pedestal Table'' from 1981–83, 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. Allegedly, Burton threw a brick through the window of Donald Judd's house at 101 Spring Street in Soho, when he found out that Judd had also been making furniture. Burton was influenced by Judd's 1965 essay "Specific Objects." 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 Robert Rosenblum (July 24, 1927 – December 6, 2006) was an American art historian and curator known for his influential and often irreverent scholarship on European and American art of the mid-eighteenth to 20th centuries. Biography Rosenblum wa ...

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.''

Death

Burton died of complications due to

AIDS Human immunodeficiency virus infection and acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (HIV/AIDS) is a spectrum of conditions caused by infection with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), a retrovirus. Following initial infection an individual m ...

on December 29, 1989, at Cabrini Medical Center in New York City. He was survived by his partner, Jonathan Erlitz, who died in 1998.

Notable works in public collections

* ''Public Table'' (1978-1979), Princeton University Art Museum, Princeton, New Jersey * ''Chair'' (1979), Allen Memorial Art Museum, Oberlin, Ohio * ''Untitled (Red/Yellow/Blue Cube)'' (1979-1980), Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles * ''Pair of Rock Chairs'' (1980-1981), Museum of Modern Art,

New York New York most commonly refers to: * New York City, the most populous city in the United States, located in the state of New York * New York (state), a state in the northeastern United States New York may also refer to: Film and television * '' ...

* ''Aluminum Chair'' (conceived 1980-1981, fabricated 1981), Museum of Modern Art, New York * ''Rock Chair'' (1981),

Philadelphia Museum of Art The Philadelphia Museum of Art (PMoA) is an art museum originally chartered in 1876 for the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia. The main museum building was completed in 1928 on Fairmount, a hill located at the northwest end of the Benjamin Fr ...

* ''Lava Rock Chair'' (1981-1982), Los Angeles County Museum of Art * ''Asymmetrical Settee'' (conceived 1982, fabricated 1985-1986), Tate, London * ''Pair of One Part Chairs'' (1983), Hessel Museum of Art,

Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College Founded in 1990, the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College (CCS Bard) is an exhibition and research center dedicated to the study of art and exhibition practices from the 1960s to the present. The Center initiated its graduate program in 1994 ...

Annandale-on-Hudson, New York Annandale-on-Hudson is a hamlet in Dutchess County, New York, United States, located in the Hudson Valley town of Red Hook, across the Hudson River from Kingston. The hamlet consists mainly of the Bard College campus. Municipal services Emerge ...

* ''Two-Part Chairs, Obtuse Angle (A Pair)'' (1983-1984), Walker Art Center, Minneapolis * ''Pair of Two-Part Chairs, Obtuse Angle'' (1984), Whitney Museum of American Art, New York * ''Untitled – half-size Maquette'' (c. 1985),

Smithsonian American Art Museum The Smithsonian American Art Museum (commonly known as SAAM, and formerly the National Museum of American Art) is a museum in Washington, D.C., part of the Smithsonian Institution. Together with its branch museum, the Renwick Gallery, SAAM holds o ...

, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. * ''Seating for Eight'' (1985),

Art Institute of Chicago The Art Institute of Chicago in Chicago's Grant Park, founded in 1879, is one of the oldest and largest art museums in the world. Recognized for its curatorial efforts and popularity among visitors, the museum hosts approximately 1.5 mill ...

* ''Settee, Bench, and Balustrade'' (1985), List Visual Arts Center, Cambridge, Massachusetts * ''Low Piece (Bench)'' (conceived 1985, fabricated 1986), Art Institute of Chicago * ''

Six-Part Seating ''Six-Part Seating'' is a sculpture by Scott Burton, installed at the National Gallery of Art Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C. The work, conceived in 1985 and fabricated in 1998, consists of six polished red granite seats that can be arranged i ...

'' (conceived 1985, fabricated 1998),

National Gallery of Art The National Gallery of Art, and its attached Sculpture Garden, is a national art museum in Washington, D.C., United States, located on the National Mall, between 3rd and 9th Streets, at Constitution Avenue NW. Open to the public and free of char ...

, Washington, D.C. * ''Sandstone Bench'' (1986), Des Moines Art Center, Iowa * ''Three-Quarter Cube Bench'' (1986), Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago * ''Seat-Leg Table'' (conceived 1986, fabricated 1991), Walker Art Center, Minneapolis * ''Two-Part Chaise Lounge'' (1986-1987), Philadelphia Museum of Art * ''Settee'' (1986-1987), The Broad, Los Angeles * ''Pair of Parallelogram Chairs'' (1987), Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, Connecticut * ''Two-Part Chairs, Right Angle Version (a Pair)'' (1987), Western Washington University Public Sculpture Collection, Bellingham * ''Two-Part Bench (a pair)'' (conceived 1987, fabricated 1989), San Francisco Museum of Modern Art * ''Rock Settee'' (1988), National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. * ''Rock Settee'' (1988), National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. * ''Bench and Table'' (conceived 1988, fabricated 1991), Smart Museum of Art, Chicago * ''Pair of Steel Chairs'' (1987-1989), Anderson Collection,

Stanford University Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is consider ...

, Stanford, California * ''Bench and Table'' (1988-1989), Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh * ''Bench and Table'' (1988-1989),

Middlebury College Museum of Art Middlebury College is a private liberal arts college in Middlebury, Vermont. Founded in 1800 by Congregationalists, Middlebury was the first operating college or university in Vermont. The college currently enrolls 2,858 undergraduates from all 5 ...

, Middlebury, Vermont * ''Perforated Metal Settee and Perforated Metal Chairs'' (1988-1989), Museum of Modern Art, New York * ''Bench and Table'' (conceived 1989, fabricated 1990), The Broad, Los Angeles

References

External links