BOOK REVIEWED: David J. Getsy, Queer Behavior: Scott Burton and Performance Art. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2022.
In the 1970s, New York-based artist Scott Burton created a series of performances that wordlessly explored an almost encyclopedic range of human behaviors. Derived from the form of the tableau vivant—a kind of “living picture” in which the body signifies meaning through pose and arrested gesture—these works rejected narrative and psychology in favor of decontextualized propositions about the ways in which humans relate to objects, to space, and to each other. In the same decade, Burton began exploring sculptural and installation works that featured pieces of furniture that had been altered or fabricated to suggest an uncanny or off-kilter “double” of familiar, functional, often vernacular pieces Americans would recognize from daily life. These mischievous works, which were both functional objects and representations of functional objects, anticipated the public art installations...