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

The title of the series is a reference 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. The works in the series, numbering around 300 sculptures, are among Edwards' most well-known and widely lauded works.

Melvin Edwards, an African-American sculptor making abstract art, had been experimenting with welding small metal scraps together for several years in the early 1960s while living in Los Angeles.^[2] In 1963, this experimentation resulted in a small relief sculpture that began his Lynch Fragments series.^[2][3] 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.^[2]

Edwards began the series during an increase in activity in the civil rights movement as well as a rise in public awareness of lynchings and racially motivated violence targeted toward African Americans.^[2][3] He had 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.^[2][4] The title of the first sculpture in the series, Some Bright Morning, is a reference to a story from Ginzburg's anthology.^[5] Writing in 1982, Edwards described the narrative of the referenced story:

"Some Bright Morning is a piece dedicated to a black family in Florida who had been warned by white people not to be so militant. The family continued to be militant until the white people said that some bright morning they were coming to get them, and when they came, the black people were armed and ready. They fought and then took to the swamp in guerilla warfare against those whites and they didn't lose."

— Melvin Edwards, "Lynch Fragments", in Buhle, Paul, et al. (eds.). Free Spirits: Annals of the Insurgent Imagination (1982).^[6]

Edwards identified several other artists as inspirations for the series, including the welded sculpture of David Smith and the work of Theodore Roszak.^[7]

After moving from Los Angeles, to New York, in January 1967, Edwards stopped making new Lynch Fragments sculptures.^[8][9] He said that "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.^[8] 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."^[9]

Edwards began making new 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.^[10][11] The Lynch Fragments works from this period are slightly larger than the earlier sculptures and extend further off the wall.^[8][10] Art historian Catherine Craft described the sculptures from 1973 as "more physically aggressive."^[10] By the end of the year he had stopped making the sculptures once again, feeling that the works "were so obsessive in their making that I couldn't develop other ideas..."^[8]

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.^[8][12] 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."^[8] 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.^[13] Craft described Edwards' 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 current events in their titles, including references to the Soweto uprising and the Iraq War.^[13]

Since restarting the series in 1978, Edwards has continued to produce new Lynch Fragments sculptures throughout his career.^[14][1] The series included over 300 sculptures as of 2024.^[15] The pieces in the series are among Edwards' most well-known and celebrated and have been cited by several authors as Edwards' breakthrough or signature works.^{[16][7][17][18][19]}

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.^[20][21][3] The sculptures are usually wall-based, although some works in the series are displayed on pedestals.^[3] Most of the works are small, generally around the size of a human head,^[22][21] and are usually installed around eye-level six feet high, what he called a "natural height."^[22]

Edwards 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 in the space will be more spatial."^[22]

Writing in 1993, art critic Michael Brenson argued that the sculptures in the series are resolutely abstract and "do not represent any one thing." Brenson wrote that although they somewhat resemble references like 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."^[20] Similarly, 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."^[16]

Brenson and curator Rodrigo Moura have both written that the consistent presence of chains and padlocks in the sculptures is meant to signify slavery and confinement, as well as the connections and bonds between people.^[23][24] Writing 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 "He has taken the rich and varied stuff of his life and welded it into sculpture that not only confronts struggle but also celebrates it."^[25] 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."^[18]

Writing in Artforum, critic Ara H. Merjian observed that the evolution of the titles - and implied subject matter - in the series marked a documentation of 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."^[26] Discussing the range of subject matters in the series as the works progressed, critic Saul Ostrow argued in Art in America that "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."^[27]

• Edwards, Melvin (1982). "Lynch Fragments". In Buhle, Paul; et al. (eds.). Free Spirits: Annals of the Insurgent Imagination. San Francisco: City Lights Books. pp. 95–96. ISBN 9780872861282. OCLC 8629174.
• Brenson, Michael (1993). "Lynch Fragments". In Gedeon, Lucinda H. (ed.). Melvin Edwards Sculpture: A Thirty-Year Retrospective, 1963–1993. Purchase, New York / Seattle: Neuberger Museum of Art / University of Washington Press. pp. 20–33. ISBN 9780295973005. OCLC 28161746.
• Gregg, Gail (February 1995). "Poetry in Heavy Metal" (PDF). ARTnews. Vol. 95, no. 2. pp. 104–107. OCLC 2392716. Archived (PDF) from the original on 15 September 2015. Retrieved 16 December 2024.
• Craft, Catherine, ed. (2015). "This Life as a Sculptor". Melvin Edwards: Five Decades. Dallas: Nasher Sculpture Center. pp. 10–33. ISBN 9780991233830. OCLC 904049795.
• Potts, Alex (2015). "Melvin Edwards' Sculptural Intensity". In Craft, Catherine (ed.). Melvin Edwards: Five Decades. Dallas: Nasher Sculpture Center. pp. 46–57. ISBN 9780991233830. OCLC 904049795.
• Irbouh, Hamid (2018). "Melvin Edwards' Lynch Fragments: Negritude and the Battle for Civil Rights in America". In Pedrosa, Adriano; Moura, Rodrigo (eds.). Melvin Edwards: Lynch Fragments. Translated by Jojima, Tie. São Paulo Museum of Art. pp. 30–42. ISBN 9788531000515. OCLC 1061526860.
• Moura, Rodrigo (2018). "Lynch Fragments: Pieces of Life, Shards of History". In Pedrosa, Adriano; Moura, Rodrigo (eds.). Melvin Edwards: Lynch Fragments. Translated by Jojima, Tie. São Paulo Museum of Art. pp. 8–13. ISBN 9788531000515. OCLC 1061526860.
• Brenson, Michael (May–June 2024). "Melvin Edwards: 'You don't play around with that power'". Sculpture. Vol. 43, no. 3. pp. 60–71. OCLC 14039712.