Edited by Adriano Pedrosa, Rodrigo Moura. Text by Hamid Irbouh, Rebecca Wolff, Renata Bittencourt, Rodrigo Moura.
Ominous and angular, the acclaimed steel sculptures of Melvin Edwards convey racial violence with edgy ingenuity
This volume brings together a significant selection of works from the titular series by the New York–based sculptor Melvin Edwards (born 1937), created between 1963 and 2016, comprising more than 50 years of what is considered the artist's central body of work.
Edwards started to produce the Fragments series when he lived in Los Angeles, at a crucial time of the civil rights movement in the United States. The works directly reference the practice of lynching after the abolition of slavery. Denouncing violence against African Americans, Edwards created these steel sculptures as forms between bodies and machines that can also be interpreted as weapons, given the sense of violence and danger suggested by their blunt, angular and protruding shapes. The selection of works in this book reflects the multiplicity of thematic interests and the formal variations across the series.
Featured image is reproduced from 'Melvin Edwards: Lynch Fragments.'
"Some Bright Morning" (1963) is reproduced from Melvin Edwards: Lynch Fragments, a 50-year retrospective of the artist's riveting, politically-charged steel sculptures. "Edwards’ personal memories and biography, stemming from his growing up in the highly racist and segregated United States, are part and parcel with the collective stories surrounding that cultural environment in the mid-20th century," Rodrigo Moura writes. "Shovels, axes, rakes, and horseshoes evoke the rural context of the U.S. South, where the artist’s ancestors settled and where he spent part of his childhood, at his grandmother’s house in the Fifth Ward of Houston, Texas, a community of African descendants and Latino immigrants. The relationships between body and machine are present through the use of structures resembling gears that also suggest an intricate relationship between the individual and society. The artist is the subject of memories that relate to a broad historical panel of cultural exchanges and power relations involving the peoples of Africa, America and Europe. The notion of fragment is fundamental: the sculptures are pieces of life and shards of history." continue to blog
FORMAT: Hbk, 7 x 10 in. / 256 pgs / 199 color / 57 b&w. LIST PRICE: U.S. $49.95 LIST PRICE: CANADA $69.95 GBP £40.00 ISBN: 9788531000515 PUBLISHER: Museu de Arte de São Paulo AVAILABLE: 10/22/2019 DISTRIBUTION: D.A.P. RETAILER DISC: TRADE PUBLISHING STATUS: Out of stock indefinitely AVAILABILITY: Not available TERRITORY: WORLD Except Brazil
Published by Museu de Arte de São Paulo. Edited by Adriano Pedrosa, Rodrigo Moura. Text by Hamid Irbouh, Rebecca Wolff, Renata Bittencourt, Rodrigo Moura.
Ominous and angular, the acclaimed steel sculptures of Melvin Edwards convey racial violence with edgy ingenuity
This volume brings together a significant selection of works from the titular series by the New York–based sculptor Melvin Edwards (born 1937), created between 1963 and 2016, comprising more than 50 years of what is considered the artist's central body of work.
Edwards started to produce the Fragments series when he lived in Los Angeles, at a crucial time of the civil rights movement in the United States. The works directly reference the practice of lynching after the abolition of slavery. Denouncing violence against African Americans, Edwards created these steel sculptures as forms between bodies and machines that can also be interpreted as weapons, given the sense of violence and danger suggested by their blunt, angular and protruding shapes. The selection of works in this book reflects the multiplicity of thematic interests and the formal variations across the series.
