Lynch Fragments

''Lynch Fragments'' is the title of a series of abstract metal sculptures created by American artist Melvin Edwards. The artist began the series in 1963 and has continued it throughout his entire career, aside from two periods in the 1960s and 1970s. The sculptures in the series, numbering around 300, are small, usually wall-based assemblages of metal scraps and objects such as spikes, chains, and scissors, welded together in various combinations.

The title of the series alludes to the practice of lynching in the United States. Edwards, an African-American artist who grew up in both an integrated community in Ohio and a segregated community in Texas, has described the works as metaphors for both the violence inflicted on black people in the U.S., and the power and struggles of African Americans fighting against that violence. Additionally, many of the works explicitly reference African and African-American history, contemporary political events, and notable figures from Edwards's life and studies in their titles.

In interpreting the ''Lynch Fragments'', some critics and art historians have highlighted the possible sociocultural and historical allusions in the underlying materials and titles, while others have argued that the works are examples of formalist abstraction whose meanings are primarily visual rather than political. The pieces in the series are among Edwards's best-known and most widely lauded works.

Background and history

Melvin Edwards, an African-American sculptor of abstract art, had been experimenting with welding small metal scraps together for several years in the early 1960s, while living in Los Angeles. In 1963, this experimentation resulted in a small relief sculpture that began his ''Lynch Fragments'' series. The first work in the series, titled ''Some Bright Morning'', comprises a shallow cylindrical form accented by bits of steel, a blade-shaped triangle of metal, and a short chain hanging from the piece with a small lump of steel at its end.

Edwards began the series during an increase in activity in the civil rights movement and in the midst of tensions in Los Angeles due to instances of police violence against black communities. He was motivated to start the series partly in response to these developments, in particular the 1962 killing of Ronald Stokes, an unarmed black man shot dead by police in Watts while he had been attempting to de-escalate a raid on the Nation of Islam mosque where he worked as secretary. Edwards saw a photograph of Stokes's body with scarring and stitches after an autopsy and said the image "sticks in my head". He had also recently read several news reports and stories about various contemporary and historical lynchings and instances of attempted violence across the country, including Ralph Ginzburg's anthology ''100 Years of Lynchings'', a compilation of reports published in 1962. The title of the first sculpture in the series, ''Some Bright Morning'', alludes to an account in Ginzburg's anthology. Writing in 1982, Edwards described the narrative of the referenced story:

Edwards has referenced the Florida story from Ginzburg's anthology several times as the source of the quote "some bright morning", but the phrase actually originated in a different story from Ginzburg's book. The original source of the quote is the story of a farmer in Georgia who was lynched in 1919 after attempting to engage in labor organizing in his community.

Having grown up in urban communities in Dayton, Ohio, and Houston, somewhat protected from more violent civilian racism in rural areas, Edwards did not witness or have experiences directly connected with lynching in his early life. Explaining the meaning of the series' title as it relates to his own experiences, he said in 1993:

While few of the works reference specific instances of lynching, Edwards chose the title in order to bring "that scale of intensity and that kind of power" to each work in the series. He also said that he used the title to guide viewers' interpretations of his sculpture: "I just didn't want them stuck in formalist criticism ..I figured that, if I called them ''Lynch Fragments'', people couldn't say, 'Well, the form does this and the form does that,' and just dismiss it." Speaking in 2015, Edwards reiterated that the title was meant to lead the viewer away from a formalist interpretation of the works, saying: "I called them ''Lynch Fragments'' because you had to consider the subjective potential. Lynching was a specific experience of African-Americans; it was a genocide committed against our people. With that name, you had to accept that the social aspect was a basic part of the art."

Edwards identified the practices of several other artists as inspirational for the series, including the welded sculpture of David Smith, the sculpture and painting of Julio González, and the work of Theodore Roszak. Beyond the styles and techniques of these artists, Edwards was inspired by the ways they communicated their social and political beliefs through their work, including in Smith's antifascist sculpture series ''Medals for Dishonor'' and González's sculpture ''La Montserrat'' depicting a peasant family. While drawing inspiration from these artists and their works, Edwards wanted to transcend the figuration used in those pieces, seeking ways to utilize abstract imagery and welding to communicate his beliefs.

After relocating from Los Angeles to New York in January 1967, Edwards stopped making new ''Lynch Fragments'' sculptures. In his words, "I felt I had gotten good esthetic mileage out of them that I wasn't getting as much out of the larger-scale pieces," so he turned his focus to his other bodies of work. He has also said that the move from California offered him an opportunity to develop beyond his old work: "That first convenience of the move from California to New York, was, well, you could close the door on the period, just by moving three thousand miles."

Edwards began making sculptures for the series again in 1973, largely as a response to pro-segregation demonstrations in New York and a rise in attacks on black people in his neighborhood, SoHo. He was also impelled to return to the series by his anger over the Vietnam War and the high casualties suffered by African Americans in the conflict. The ''Lynch Fragments'' works from this period are slightly larger than the earlier sculptures and extend further off the wall. Art historian Catherine Craft characterizes the sculptures from 1973 as "more physically aggressive". By the end of the year, Edwards had stopped making the sculptures once again, as he felt that the works "were so obsessive in their making that I couldn't develop other ideas..."

In 1978, Edwards mounted a retrospective exhibition at the Studio Museum in Harlem, which gave him the opportunity to view a large number of the ''Lynch Fragments'' sculptures together for the first time in several years. This inspired him to start making new sculptures for the series: "I said, you do have plenty of ideas. After the show was over, I said, why cut it off, just find a way, shit." In addition, his new position teaching art at Rutgers University afforded him more stability and the funds for a larger studio, allowing him to experiment more with the series. Craft described Edwards's choice to begin work on the series again as "motivated by creative rather than political urgency", although several of the ''Lynch Fragments'' sculptures from post-1978 do reference in their titles current events, among which are the Soweto uprising and the Iraq War.

After traveling to Africa for the first time in the early 1970s and continuing to visit different parts of the continent throughout the decade, Edwards began using various references to African history and politics as the titles for the works in the series, along with the names of artists and leaders whom he had met or been inspired by in Africa. He also began using phrases from African languages as titles for ''Lynch Fragments'' sculptures such as ''Koyo'' (1973), which takes its title from an Edo greeting, and ''Sekuru Knows'' (1988), titled in reference to a Shona word for elder or grandfather. Further travels in Africa and throughout Latin America and Asia in the 1970s, '80s, and beyond inspired a range of titles relating to additional global histories, figures, and social movements, including ''Palmares'' (1988), created to honor the centennial of the abolition of slavery in Brazil. Specific figures named or referenced in the title of sculptures from the series include artists, musicians, activists, politicians, and writers such as Charles Alston, J. Max Bond Jr., Amílcar Cabral, critic Wilfred Cartey, Léon-Gontran Damas, Frantz Fanon, Makina Kameya, Martin Luther King Jr., Wifredo Lam, Norman Lewis, Al Loving, Samora Machel, Ana Mendieta, Senegalese blacksmith Bara Niasse, Gilberto de la Nuez, Charlie Parker, Francisco Romão, José Clemente Orozco, John Takawira, Henry Tayali, Ida B. Wells, and Richard Wright, as well as Edwards's late wife, Jayne Cortez. Edwards purposely decided not to name works in the series after any then-broadly known artists or figures of European descent.

Since restarting the series in 1978, Edwards continued to produce new ''Lynch Fragments'' sculptures throughout his career. The series included more than 300 sculptures as of 2024. The pieces in the series are among Edwards's best-known and celebrated, and have been cited by several authors as his breakthrough or signature works. Edwards himself spoke in 1993 about the importance of the series to his overall career, saying: "The ''Lynch Fragments'' have changed my life. They made this life of thirty years as a sculptor. They are the core to all the work. If anybody ever knows I lived, this is going to be why."

Description

Edwards has used an array of metal objects and materials to create the sculptures, including whole or severed axes, barbed wire, bolts, car parts, chains, farm tools, gears, hammers, horseshoes, jacks, knives, nails, padlocks, rakes, scissors, shovels, spikes, and wrenches. He said he sometimes spends months, weeks, or years slowly adding elements to a work before considering it finished, a process he described as "organic", saying "It was like they grew rather than they were made".

The sculptures are usually wall-based, although some works in the series are displayed on pedestals. Most of the works are small, generally around the size of a human head, and are usually installed around eye-level six feet high, which Edwards called a "natural height". He described his ideal installation for exhibiting the sculptures, saying the works needed to be spaced three feet apart, preferably installed in groups of multiples of 16, and ideally exhibited in a circular space "because the feeling of the pieces ..will be more spatial." He developed this installation structure after his first solo museum exhibition in 1965 at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art; his ''Lynch Fragments'' sculptures in that exhibition were installed fairly haphazardly by museum staff without his input, leading him to think more deeply about a preferred installation technique.

Reception and analysis

A range of critics, curators, and art historians have written in different terms about their experiences with and understanding of the series. In 2024, art critic Michael Brenson argued that Edwards "wants viewers to respond to them vividly, in ways that reveal their multiplicity, and we do." Michael Kimmelman observed in ''The New York Times'' that the sculptures had an "intense and concentrated energy", and Nancy Princenthal wrote in the magazine '' Art in America'' that "these sculptures seem ready to detonate on contact". Similarly, critic Jonathan Goodman, writing for ''artcritical.com'', said the sculptures were "eloquent but also brutalized shards of content hatfeel as though they are ready to explode." Critic William Zimmer wrote in the ''New York Times'' that the works give "the impression that they aren't achieved as much by sweat work as by natural, albeit mystical, accretion." Critic and poet Nancy Morejón, writing about the sculptures in ''The Black Scholar'', "found in them indescribable truth and beauty", and highlighted the tactile nature of the works, saying that she wanted "to be able to touch the magic substance that formed these fragments". Curator Alison de Lima Greene noted the lyrical quality of the sculptures, saying that Edwards "brings almost a poet's eye to the assemblage of objects."

Writing about the range of materials in the works, critic Martin Herbert called the sculptures "blackened metal agglutinations" and said they "often resemble distorted, dehumanised faces." Brenson and curator Rodrigo Moura have both noted that the consistent presence of chains and padlocks in the sculptures is meant to signify enslavement and bondage, as well as the positive connections and bonds between people. In 1993, Brenson posited the view that the sculptures in the series are resolutely abstract and "do not represent any one thing"; according to him, although the sculptures somewhat resemble references to African masks and carry the associations of their materials – metal objects with a past use – the works' "compositional exchanges, sculptural unity, and poetic suggestiveness are always more persuasive than the functional reality of the objects within them." Curator April Kingsley said in 1981 that the early work from the series "looks very much like it came full-formed out of nowhere". Artist Rudolf Baranik, expounding on Kingsley's observation, wrote that while viewers could attempt to discern historical meaning in the individual items comprising the sculptures, "it would only hinder the understanding."

Critic Barry Schwabsky argued in ''The Nation'' that the main focus of the sculptures was their visual presence as opposed to their social content: "The associative connotations, though inexpungible, remain secondary ..Instead, the artist's fascination with the formal experience of art seems paramount." Likewise, critic Clarence D. White said in '' Art Papers'' that although the sculptures "owe their power primarily to the political and social historical allusions inherent in the fabulously varied inventory of industrial implements that figure in them", he viewed "the process of their being amalgamated into gripping presences" as equally important. Expanding on a similar point, critic Vivien Raynor wrote in the ''Times'' that "such is dwards'sgift for assemblage that in his hands a spike is not merely the means by which a railroad tie is secured ..Since he does little to change the appearance of his ingredients, one can only conclude that they are transformed because he has chosen them." In ''ARTnews'', critic Gail Gregg said that despite "the aggressiveness" of the materials in many of the works, "the ''Fragments'' contain an emotional synthesis", adding that " dwardshas taken the rich and varied stuff of his life and welded it into sculpture that not only confronts struggle but also celebrates it." Art historian Harmon Siegel wrote in the journal ''American Art'' about the meanings in the works' underlying materials: "These fragments are not neutral. Assembling them into the whole does not devalue them as parts ..In that sense, Edwards insists on the tension between material as material, and material as thing".

Critic Cate McQuaid, writing in ''The Boston Globe'', said the series uses art historical tools to convey historical meaning: "While the sculptures' industrial steel nods to Minimalism, their patina and social history flood them with associations to slavery, confinement, and the ongoing consequences of colonialism." Brenson, exploring the meaning of the title of the series, said: "While ''Lynch Fragments'' names, repeatedly, the fact of white supremacist terror against Black human beings, 'fragment' implies incompleteness, not finality", adding that many of the individual works' titles highlight "Black creativity ..and they, as well as other titles, hint at stories that viewers will extend once they learn what they are." In ''Artforum'', Ara H. Merjian observed that the evolution of the individual titles – and implied subject matter – in the series documented an array of historical wrongs: "The intermittent progression of Edwards's gnarled steel sculptures over the past five decades—responding to civil rights abuses, to Vietnam-era injustices, or to the government-sanctioned exportation of racialized violence to detention centers abroad—figures its own postwar history." Discussing the range of subject matter in the series as the works progressed, Saul Ostrow argued in ''Art in America'': "Though Edwards's work has long been seen as a product of African-American indignation and pride, today we are able to recognize his sculptures as something more varied."

John Yau wrote in ''Hyperallergic'' that the early works from the series retained their visual power long after they were first shown and "have gained in resonance over time because they point to the physical pain and constraints that humans have had to endure throughout history." Writing in 2015 in ''Sculpture'' magazine, critic Joan Pachner said the series "retains its urgently relevant voice", adding that, "With metaphors that extend out into a broader commentary about African and American cultural intersections and race relations, his achievement is a mature and profound synthesis." Similarly, critic Ciarán Finlayson wrote in 2021 in ''Artforum'' that the works "have a brilliant transversal quality" and that "their idiom, developed over the past six decades, has lost none of its disquieting contemporaneity over time." Conversely, in ''frieze'' magazine, critic Morgan Quaintance argued that "the powerful affects these associations once provoked are now dampened by the spectator's historical distance" from the civil rights movement and struggles of the 1960s and 1970s, although Quaintance added: "Perhaps it's unfair to demand Edwards's work stand up to the strange and insidious world of contemporary metropolitan racism".

Exhibition history

Edwards first exhibited sculptures from the series at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art in 1965. He has since regularly exhibited them in solo and group exhibitions.

In 1978, Edwards showed 16 sculptures from the series at his first retrospective exhibition, a small show at the Studio Museum in Harlem. He presented a number of ''Lynch Fragments'' sculptures in his first solo commercial gallery exhibition in 1990 at CDS Gallery in New York. His 30-year touring retrospective, originating at the Neuberger Museum of Art in 1993, included a large number of ''Lynch Fragments''. He exhibited sculptures from the series again in a solo show at CDS Gallery in 1994.

Several works from the series were included in the 56th Venice Biennale in 2015, curated by Okwui Enwezor, the Biennale's first African curator. In 2017, sculptures from the series were included in the historical survey exhibition '' Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power'', originating at the Tate Modern in London, curated by Mark Godfrey and Zoé Whitley. The exhibition featured ''Some Bright Morning'' (1963) – the first work from the series – along with several other ''Lynch Fragments''.

The São Paulo Museum of Art staged a survey of ''Lynch Fragments'' sculptures in 2018, the most comprehensive exhibition of the series to have been mounted. In 2024, 13 examples of the ''Lynch Fragments'' were presented in the retrospective ''Melvin Edwards: Some Bright Morning'', the artist's first solo museum exhibition in Europe, held at the Fridericianum in Kassel, Germany.

Selected sculptures in public collections

*''Afrophoenix No. 1'' (1963), Art Institute of Chicago
*''Hers'' (1963), Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, Virginia
*''Nam'' (1973), Memorial Art Gallery, Rochester, New York
*''Untitled'' (1973), Samek Art Museum, Bucknell University, Lewisburg, Pennsylvania
*''Nigerian Diamond'' (1978), Rose Art Museum, Waltham, Massachusetts
*''All Most'' (1985), National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
*''Early Time'' (1986), Museum of Fine Arts, Houston
*''Justice for Tropic-Ana (dedicated to Ana Mendieta)'' (1986), Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh
*''Katutura'' (1986), Museum of Modern Art, New York
*''Palmares'' (1988), São Paulo Museum of Art
*''Ready Now Now'' (1988), Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
*''Takawira - J'' (1989), Brooklyn Museum, New York
*''Premonition'' (1990), Birmingham Museum of Art, Birmingham, Alabama
*''Off and Gone'' (1992), Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago
*''Haitian September'' (1994), Columbus Museum of Art, Columbus, Ohio
*''Deni Malick'' (1999), Fralin Museum of Art, Charlottesville, Virginia
*''Iraq'' (2003), Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas
*''Night Work in Vermont'' (2003), Museu Afro Brasil, São Paulo
*''Max Bond Architect'' (2009), National Museum of African American History and Culture, Washington, D.C.
*''Two is One'' (2016), Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, Connecticut
*''Numunake Inike OK'' (2019), Middlebury College Museum of Art, Middlebury, Vermont

Notes, citations, and references

Notes

Citations

Cited references

*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*

Further reading

*
*

{{DEFAULTSORT:Lynch Fragments
Sculpture series
1963 sculptures
1960s sculptures
1970s sculptures
1980s sculptures
1990s sculptures
2000s sculptures
2010s sculptures
2020s sculptures
Metal sculptures