Scott Burton was an American sculptor and performance artist best known for his large-scale furniture sculptures in granite and bronze.
11 Facts About Scott Burton
2.
Scott Burton began his artistic career at the Washington Workshop Center in Washington DC in the mid-1950s under Leon Berkowitz, before progressing to the Hans Hofmann School of Fine Arts in Provincetown, Massachusetts.
3.
Between 1959 and 1962 Scott Burton took classes at Goddard College in Plainfield, Vermont, George Washington University in Washington, DC, Harvard University, and Columbia University, where he finally received his bachelor's degree.
4.
In 1963 Scott Burton was awarded a Master of Fine Arts degree from New York University in New York City.
5.
Scott Burton came to meet, among others, Edward Albee, Jerome Robbins, Lincoln Kirstein, and Alex Katz.
6.
Scott Burton 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.
7.
Scott 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.
8.
Scott Burton 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.
9.
Scott Burton 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.
10.
Scott Burton died of complications due to AIDS on December 29,1989, at Cabrini Medical Center in New York City.
11.
Scott Burton was survived by his partner, Jonathan Erlitz, who died in 1998.