Lynch Fragments is a series of abstract metal sculptures created by American artist Melvin Edwards. He began the series in 1963 and continued it throughout his career, aside from two periods in the 1960s and 1970s. The sculptures number around 300 and are small, usually wall-based assemblages of metal scraps and objects such as spikes, chains, and scissors, welded together.
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, described the works as metaphors for the violence inflicted on black people in the U.S. as well as the power and struggles of African Americans fighting against that violence. In their titles, many of the works explicitly reference African and African-American history, contemporary political events, and notable figures from Edwards's life and studies.
Some critics and art historians have observed sociocultural and historical allusions in the underlying objects and titles of the Lynch Fragments, 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 (1937–2026), an African-American sculptor of abstract art, had been experimenting with welding small metal scraps for several years in the early 1960s while living in Los Angeles. In 1963, this experimentation resulted in a small relief sculpture that became the first work in his Lynch Fragments series. This sculpture, 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.
According to Edwards, inspirations for the series include David Smith's welded sculptures,: "He has looked hard at David Smith. 'You have to think about Smith,' Edwards says. 'Everybody had to think about Smith. Any book I can find on Smith I'll buy because he made a beautiful contribution.' There are signs of Smith in Edwards's love for the physicality of steel and for the act of welding, in his use of found objects, and in his feeling for the function and the mystique of tools." the sculpture and painting of Julio González,: "Edwards has also looked hard to Julio González, a formative influence on Smith and the sculptor who is generally considered the founder of the welded-metal tradition." and the work of Theodore Roszak.: "Edwards was particularly attracted to welding. 'There were graduate students working in styles that came from a mixture of David Smith ... and ... Theodore Roszak. From what I knew of modern welded sculpture at that point, Roszak seemed more important than Smith. There was just more Roszak in the books that I came across than Smith. He was also inspired by the ways they communicated their social and political beliefs through their work, including in Smith's anti-fascist sculpture series Medals for Dishonor and González's sculpture La Montserrat depicting a peasant family.: "Edwards's interest in González and Smith extends to the content of their work. 'González's Montserrat, Smith's Medals for Dishonor and my Lynch Fragments I put in the same conceptual ball park,' Edwards says, citing Smith's anti-fascist medallions of 1939–40 and González's peasant mother and child of 1936–37, examples of sculpture that is unmistakably political, yet richly poetic and elusive. 'It's the social content,' he continues. 'It's more important than the fact that the three of us weld. Edwards, however, wanted to move beyond their use of the human figure and communicate his beliefs through abstract imagery.: "Edwards admired Smith and Julio González for their socially conscious art, yet Smith's Medals of Dishonor and González's Montserrat works largely relied on figuration and on modeling and casting rather than welding. If sculpture could yield the kind of physicality Edwards had been unable to find in painting, what did welding offer that other sculptural processes did not, and how might he use it to create an art expressive of his own concerns?"
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 of the series was chosen partly as a response to these developments, particularly the 1962 killing of Ronald Stokes, an unarmed black man shot dead by police in Watts while 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".Melvin Edwards, quoted in He had also recently read news reports and stories about contemporary and historical lynchings and instances of attempted anti-black violence, including in Ralph Ginzburg's anthology 100 Years of Lynchings, published in 1962. The title of Some Bright Morning alludes to an account in Ginzburg's anthology. Writing in 1982, Edwards described the narrative of the referenced story:
Edwards referenced this story several times as the source of the quote "some bright morning". The phrase actually originated in a different section of Ginzburg's book, 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, Texas, protected from more violent civilian racism in rural areas, Edwards did not witness or have direct experiences 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 to bring "that scale of intensity and that kind of power" to each work in the series., quoted in . He also chose it because he did not want the sculptures to be viewed solely through the lens of formalist art discourse, the study of art purely through its visual attributes without social or political contextualization., quoted in : "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.", quoted in : "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."
1967–1978: Series paused, briefly restarted before full return Edwards continued producing Lynch Fragments sculptures until January 1967, stopping 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",Melvin Edwards, quoted in and he turned his focus to works like his painted outdoor sculptures and installations of barbed wire and chain.
He resumed work on the series 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 by his anger over the Vietnam War and the high casualties suffered by African Americans. The Lynch Fragments works from 1973 are slightly larger than the earlier sculptures and extend further off the wall, and art historian Catherine Craft characterizes them 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.: "At the end of the year, Edwards turned away from the Fragments a second time. 'I stopped myself at the end of the year,' he says. 'I got to feeling they were so obsessive in their making that I couldn't develop the other ideas, so I said I'd better stop there and do that.
In 1978, Edwards mounted a retrospective exhibition at the Studio Museum in Harlem which included sixteen Lynch Fragments sculptures, giving him the opportunity to view that many installed together in a gallery for the first time in several years and inspiring him to begin making new works for the series again.: "The spark was an exhibition at The Studio Museum in Harlem in which he showed sixteen of them [...] and realized he 'had a lot more to do.' [...] 'And 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 resume work on the series as "motivated by creative rather than political urgency", although several sculptures from after 1978 do reference current or recent events in their titles, including the 1976 Soweto uprising and the Iraq War (2003–2011).
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 (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 and 1980s 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.
After 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 spent 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".Melvin Edwards, quoted in 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."Melvin Edwards, quoted in
Description and installation method