Published by BMA, 1986

Scott Burton’s works are not furniture; they are sculptures that perform as the furniture they represent. The distinction was important to Burton, and he always maintained that these objects could be seen in at least two ways: as an artwork that was in dialogue with the history of modernist art and design and as something that anyone could understand—a functional object that offered itself up for use. However simple they appear at first, Burton’s sculptures derive from his core beliefs: to value the differences among us and to generously offer his sculptures’ support to all who come along.

Burton began as a writer before becoming a performance artist and sculptor. In the mid-1960s he began writing art criticism, helping to chart the expanded formats for sculpture later in that decade.

In 1969 he took up performance art as part of the Street Works events organized by his friends Hannah Weiner, Marjorie Strider, John Perreault, Bernadette Mayer, and Eduardo Costa. These festival-like events involved artists engaging in Conceptual actions or performances in the street. Burton’s performances often flirted with invisibility or tested behavioral norms, as with his 1969 Self-Work: Disguise, in which he dressed in female-identified clothing to camouflage his presence at the festival. For the fourth iteration of Street Works, Burton drugged himself to sleep in the middle of the exhibition’s opening party. In this work, Self-Work: Dream, Burton turned his body into an inert sculpture that raised ethical questions for the other party-goers.