FRIEZE: Scott Burton Has His Day

“…Next autumn, Oscar Tuazon will unveil Eternal Flame for Scott Burton, a public sculpture for the New York City AIDS Memorial featuring elements of another of Burton’s destroyed projects, in Sheepshead Bay. Such interventions are not a substitute for preservation but, under the circumstances, the unorthodox strategies devised by this unlikely cohort have succeeded in keeping the work in circulation and have recentred Burton’s ideas about public art.

I am reminded, in closing, of a comment Burton made in an interview with Edward Brooks DeCelle, published in The Advocate’s January 1981 issue (and referenced by Hall and Getsy): ‘Any chair is useful, but a very striking looking chair – something that isn’t like a usual chair – can make people perhaps more flexible in their attitudes to accept more things – to become more democratic about what a chair is. They may even become more democratic about what a person is.’”