Scott Burton: Collected writings on art and performance, 1965–1975

Chicago: Soberscove Press, 2012
David Getsy’s edited volume brings together for the first time Burton's essays and unpublished manuscripts from these years, tracing his work as an art critic as well as his early statements on performance. In his writing, Burton championed positions that others held as mutually exclusive and antagonistic. He advocated for reductive abstract art while defending figuration, and he argued for the urgency of time-based and ephemeral art practices in the same years that he curated exhibitions of realist painting. Distinct in these diverse texts are Burton's increasing concerns with art's appeal to affects, empathies, and subjective responses; the early formulation of his desire to make art public and demotic; and his critical grasp on the implications and exclusions of mainstream narratives of art. This collection offers rich new context for Burton's sculptural work and reveals him as an important voice in the rapidly changing art world of the 1960s and 1970s.

FROM THE REVIEWS
"[Burton's] fizzing erudition and gift for moments of evocative imprecision make this book a vital -- and vitally personal -- study of an often over-simplified decade in American art."
– The Burlington Magazine

"Getsy--who offers astute commentary and guidance for the reader in the form of editor's notes and an introduction--has collected a set of early writings that demonstrate Burton's influential position [...] Part of the significance of this collection is that it demonstrates the importance of the artist-critic, who, by making art and situating it in the larger cultural climate, can advocate for and stimulate meaningful change."
– Sculpture Magazine

“During the reading (a choice of around 30 texts, some of which were unpublished written between 1965 and 1975), we discover a critic who is committed and animated by the desire to bring contemporary creation closer to the public, to show him that there is something other than a cold and elitist art that the majority of art critics were promoting then. He promotes a sensitive, even sensual art, which involves the viewer's body and his intimate feelings.”
– Histara

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