BURTON, Scott; WILCOX, Jess (ed.); SMITH, Heather Alexis (ed.)
Scott Burton: Shape Shift

My works … are also commodities, absolutely. But for me, there’s at least a beginning of a new kind of art for a society, not only just to do good so people can sit in a pleasant place but for some new kinds of environment. Especially in America, this idea of public art becomes important because we have no public life.
—Scott Burton, 1988

Over the course of his more than three-decade career, Scott Burton (1939–1989) made groundbreaking contributions to sculpture, performance, public art, queer art, and criticism. Responding to what he identified as a gap between art and its potential audiences, Burton became a tireless advocate for accessible and popular artworks that everyday people could use and enjoy. In keeping with this principle, he also designed performances and “sculpture furniture” to explore and orchestrate social dynamics; he was particularly interested in intimacy, distance, collectivity, and isolation.

Scott Burton: Shape Shift provides a comprehensive overview of the artist’s biography and career with texts focusing on his public artworks, performance, and innovative use of materials. Featuring more than forty full-page images of Burton’s sculpture, which is rarely published, the book also includes numerous never-before-seen images of notes, photographs, and drawings from the artist’s extensive personal archive, housed at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Scores and photographic documentation of newly commissioned performances on the occasion of the accompanying exhibition are also included. [publishers’ note]

With contributions by David J. Getsy, Darling Green, Brendan Fernandes, Kathy Halbreich, Gordon Hall, Heather Alexis Smith, Jeff Wilcox.

Published by Yale University Press / Pulitzer Arts Foundation, 2025
Monographs / Sculpture / Queer Culture