Scott Burton: Shape Shift

Jess Wilcox

ISBN 10: 0300284136 / ISBN 13: 9780300284133

Published by Yale University Press, 2025

About this Item

304pp. Colour plates.

Seller Inventory # 32719

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Scott Burton: Shape Shift
• Publisher: Yale University Press
• Publication Date: 2025
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0300284136
• ISBN 13: 9780300284133
• Binding: Pub.pictorial Boards
• Condition: New
• Seller catalogs:
  • Sculpture 20th Century +
  • Contemporary Art,, Design and Lifestyle

About this title

Synopsis

An unprecedented glimpse into the working methods and the complicated legacy of an important twentieth-century artist
 
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.
 
Distributed for the Pulitzer Arts Foundation
 
Exhibition Schedule:
 
Pulitzer Arts Foundation, St. Louis
(September 6, 2024–February 2, 2025)
 
Wrightwood 659, Chicago
(October 3, 2025–January 31, 2026)

About the Author

Jess Wilcox is an independent curator. Heather Alexis Smith is Assistant Curator at the Pulitzer Arts Foundation.