Lynch Fragments
Lynch Fragments is 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 number around 300, and are small and 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
1963–1966: Early works, artistic and political background
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. This 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.He 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.
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. The title Edwards chose for the series was partly a 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 has reiterated several times that he did not want the sculptures to be viewed solely through the lens of formalist art discourse, or the study of art purely through its visual attributes without social or political contextualization, so he used the title to make viewers understand that the social context of the sculptures was inextricable from their visual form.
1967–1978: Series paused, briefly restarted before full return
Edwards continued producing Lynch Fragments sculptures until January 1967, stopping work on the series when he relocated from Los Angeles to New York. 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", and he turned his focus to his other bodies of work like his painted outdoor sculptures and installations of barbed wire and chain.He 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. 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 repetitive format was limiting his other work.
In 1978, Edwards mounted a retrospective exhibition at the Studio Museum in Harlem, giving him the opportunity to view a large number of the Lynch Fragments sculptures installed together in a gallery for the first time in several years and inspiring him to begin making new works for the series again. 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 after 1978 do reference in their titles current or recent events, among which are the 1976 Soweto uprising and the Iraq War.
Post–1978: Full return to series, new global inspirations
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, which takes its title from an Edo greeting, and Sekuru Knows, titled in reference to a Shona word for "elder" or "grandfather". Further travels in Africa and throughout Latin America and Asia in the 1970s and 1980s inspired a range of titles relating to additional global histories, figures, and social movements, including Palmares, 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. Edwards 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 pieces in the series are among Edwards's best-known and most 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 and installation method
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 made of various metal scraps and implements welded onto a flat metal base mounted to the wall, usually circular, square, or triangular in shape. The materials Edwards welds onto the base sometimes protrude from or hang off of the sculptures and the works range visually from condensed, largely flat compositions to more sprawling sculptures with elements that extend further off the wall. 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. Although the works are visually abstract apart from the identifiable objects used to create them, critics have compared them visually to skulls, gas masks, and traditional masks from across Africa, and several writers have noted that many of the constituent parts of the works resemble mouths, tongues, phalluses, and other body parts.The works are normally installed at eye-level for Edwards, around high, which he called a "natural height". He described his ideal installation for exhibiting the sculptures, saying the works needed to be spaced apart, preferably installed in groups of multiples of sixteen, and ideally exhibited in a circular space. 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.