Magic Episodes: The Transhemispheric Correspondence of Scott Burton and Eduardo Costa, 1970–1980
Magic Episodes: The Transhemispheric Correspondence of Scott Burton and Eduardo Costa, 1970–1980
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About the Book
After meeting in New York City in 1968, artists Scott Burton (1939–1989) and Eduardo Costa (b. 1940) developed a close friendship that lasted until the former’s death. Over letters, they gossiped and thought aloud about how rapid changes in the art world and queer life were shaping their work. This volume of correspondence offers an intimate glimpse into a queer artistic friendship as well as new perspectives on the transnational struggle to establish conceptual artistic practices in the 1970s. As Costa moved from New York to Buenos Aires to Rio de Janeiro, he and Burton discussed the art communities of North and South America, encounters with Costa’s friend Hélio Oiticica, and the lasting influence of Marcel Duchamp. Both artists found letter writing to be a source of emotional and intellectual nourishment—as will their readers.
Authors
Scott Burton
was a public artist, sculptor, performance artist, and critic. His archives are housed at MoMA, and his work is included in such collections as the National Gallery of Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Tate.
Eduardo Costa
emerged as a conceptual artist in Buenos Aires and New York in the 1960s. Major retrospective exhibitions at the Museo Tamayo (2018) and the Modern Art Museum of Buenos Aires (2014). His works are in the collections of MoMA, the Metropolitan, and the Guggenheim.
Editors
David J. Getsy
is a historian of art and performance. His latest book, Queer Behavior: Scott Burton and Performance Art, received the 2023 Robert Motherwell Book Award. His previous books include Abstract Bodies: Sixties Sculpture in the Expanded Field of Gender; Rodin: Sex and the Making of Modern Sculpture; Scott Burton: Collected Writings on Art and Performance, 1965–1975; and the anthology of artists writings, Queer. He teaches at the University of Virginia, where he is the Eleanor Shea Professor of Art History.
Patrick Greaney
is Professor of Humanities at the University of Colorado Boulder. He edited Conceptualism and Other Fictions: The Collected Writings of Eduardo Costa, 1965–2015 (Les Figues Press, 2016), and his translations include Heimrad Bäcker’s SEASCAPE (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2013) and, as co-translator, Carlos Soto Román’s 11 (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2023).