The Emotional Nature of the Number of Inches Between: Body Language, Sexuality, and Affectual Transfer in Scott Burton's Behavior Tableaux of the 1970s

Throughout the 1970s, the artist-critic Scott Burton developed a mode of performance art that was unique amongst his peers. Called the Behavior Tableaux, these works participated in debates about theater’s role in contemporary art and were developed as a critical response to Minimalist art.  Performed at such venues as the Whitney Museum, Documenta, and the Guggenheim, the Behavior Tableaux fused elements of sculpture, theater, dance, and painting.  They catalogued scenes of interpersonal power dynamics and presented exchanges of desire, dominance, aggression, shame, and submission.  Burton developed these works from his study of the cybernetic literature on body language as well as his participatory observation of coded queer non-verbal communication, whether that be street cruising or in gay bathhouses.  This lecture will track the trilogy of Behavior Tableaux Burton created between 1972 and 1980 and discuss the ways in which sexuality became crucial to this critical response to the art theory supporting Minimalist sculpture and to this major contribution to the development of performance art in the 1970s.  In particular, a central question will be how Burton’s work was designed to transfer affect from performer to audience by manipulating the situation of viewing these silent, hour-long, and slowly moving performances. These works demonstrate how queer experience and politics became central to the definitions of postminimalism and, in Burton’s longer history, to public art.

Scott Burton, two scenes from the Individual Behavior Tableaux, performed at the Berkeley Art Museum by Kent Hines, 1980.