Richard Lippold

American sculptor

Richard Lippold

Lippold working on a sculpture, circa 1950

Born| (1915-05-03)May 3, 1915

Milwaukee, Wisconsin, U.S.

Died| August 22, 2002(2002-08-22) (aged 87)

Locust Valley, New York, U.S.

Nationality| American
Education| University of Chicago
Art Institute of Chicago
Known for| Sculpture
Notable work| Ad Astra

Richard Lippold (May 3, 1915 – August 22, 2002) was an American sculptor, known for his geometric constructions using wire as a medium.

## Life

[edit]

Lippold was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He studied at the University of Chicago, and graduated from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in industrial design in 1937.[1] Lippold worked as an industrial designer from 1937 to 1941. After he became a sculptor, Lippold taught at several universities, including Hunter College at the City University of New York, from 1952 to 1967. During his brief tenure at Black Mountain College, he was introduced to the artist Ray Johnson, with whom he was involved romantically for many years.[2]

When describing Lippold's floor-to-ceiling sculpture "Trinity", the American artist Howard Newman said:

> Lippold was an engineering genius, but we've been dealing with a piece that had reached the threshold of catastrophe,...People's mouths fall open when they see it going back up, like they're watching a spider spin a web of blazing gold,...The more that goes up, the more exquisite it gets.[3]

The 14th and 15th of John Cage's famous Sonatas and Interludes for prepared piano are subtitled Gemini – after the work of Richard Lippold.

## Works

[edit]

* 1949–50, Variation Number 7: Full Moon, at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City[4][5][6]
* 1950, World Tree, in Harvard Graduate Center at Harvard Law School in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Walter Gropius, designer[7]
* 1950–51, Aerial Act, at the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford, Connecticut
* 1953–56, Variation within a Sphere, Number 10: The Sun, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, which includes more than two miles of gold wire; first commissioned work by this museum.[8]
* 1958–60, Trinity, Chapel of Portsmouth Abbey School, Portsmouth, RI. Pietro Belluschi, building architect.
* 1958, Radiant I, at the Inland Steel Building in Chicago, IL. Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, building architects[9]
* 1959, Untitled, The Four Seasons, and Seagram Building Construction No. 1, at the Four Seasons Restaurant, Seagram Building, New York City. Philip Johnson, Mies Van der Rohe building architects.
* 1959, Great Lone Star, at the Longview Museum of Fine Arts, Longview, TX.[10]
* 1959, Spirit Vine (label art), The Museum of Wine in Art, Château Mouton Rothschild, Pauillac, France.[11][12]
* 1961, Homage to Our Age, Reception Area, J. Walter Thompson, New York City.
* 1962, Orpheus and Apollo, at Avery Fisher Hall at Lincoln Center in New York City, with architect Max Abramovitz[13] Orpheus and Apollo has been reinstalled at LaGuardia Airport as per NY Times 10/14/2023.
* 1963, Flight, PanAm Building, New York, NY, with architects Emery Roth, Pietro Belluschi, Walter Gropius.
* 1966, Gemini II, at Jones Hall, Houston, TX. William Wayne Caudill, building architect.
* 1967–70, Baldacchino, St. Mary's Cathedral, San Francisco, CA. Pietro Belluschi, building architect.
* 1970, Homage to North Carolina, at North Carolina National Bank, Charlotte, North Carolina,[14]
* 1970, Youth, Fine Arts Museum of the South, Mobile, Alabama.
* 1975, Flora Raris, Hyatt Regency Atlanta
* 1975, Homage to H.I.H. the Late King Faisal, InterContinental Hotel Conference Center, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia[15][16][17][18]
* 1976, Ad Astra, at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C. Gyo Obata, building architect.
* 1977, Untitled, Grand Court, Columbia Mall, Columbia, South Carolina
* 1977, In Skyspace, Kish International Airport, Kish Island, Iran
* 1980, Wings of Welcome at the Hyatt Regency, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Py-Vavra, building architect.
* 1981, Winged Gamma, for Park Avenue Atrium Building, New York City, with office of Edward Durell Stone
* 1984, Untitled, One Financial Center, Boston
* 1985, Primal Energy, Sohio Headquarters, Cleveland, Ohio
* 1985, Counterpoint with Architecture, Deutsche Bank, Frankfurt, Germany
* 1986, Fire Bird at the Orange County Performing Art Center, Costa Mesa, California. Cesar Pelli, building architect.
* 1986, Copper Crystal, Crystal Park II Building, Crystal City, Virginia
* 1986, Homage to South Korea, Dae-Han Building, Seoul, Korea
* 1986, Orchidea, Marina Mandarin Hotel, Singapore
* 1988, Ex Stasis, Haggerty Museum, Marquette University, Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Kahler Slater, building architect.
* 1988, Encounter at Fairlane Town Center, Dearborn, Michigan (de-installed pending conservation)[19][20]

## Group exhibitions

[edit]

* Origins of Modern Sculpture, 1945[21][22] Organized by Wilhelm Valentiner[23]
* Detroit Institute of Arts, January 22, 1946, to March 3, 1946
* City Art Museum of Saint Louis, March 30, 1946, to May 1, 1946

## Solo exhibitions

[edit]

* Willard Gallery 1947,[21] 1948,1949, 1950, 1951, 1952, 1961, 1968, 1973
* Arts Club of Chicago, Richard Lippold Sculpture, 1954
* Patrick and Beatrice Haggerty Museum of Art, Richard Lippold: Sculpture, 1990–91

## Publications

[edit]

* Notes in Passing, by Richard Lippold, Arts & Architecture, August 1947.
* Before Band Wagons, Allene Talmey, Vogue Magazine. August 15, 1949, p. 133.
* Craft Horizons, June 1952.
* Four Artists in a Mansion, Harpers Bazaar, July 1952.
* French Vogue, May 1955.
* Lippold Makes a Construction, by Lawerence Campbell, Art News, Oct. 1956.
* Eye on the Sun, Vogue, February 1, 1958.
* Profiles: A Thing Among Things, Calvin Tompkins, New Yorker, March 1963.
* Synergizing Space, Sculpture, Architecture and Richard Lippold at Lincoln Center, Marin R. Sullivan, American Art, Summer 2019.

## References

[edit]

1. ^ "Richard Lippold (American sculptor) – Britannica Online Encyclopedia". Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved July 29, 2010.
2. ^ url=https://www.chicagotribune.com/2022/02/17/review-ray-johnson-co-at-art-institute-sums-up-an-artist-with-portraits-binders-and-mail-whose-life-was-his-chief-artwork/
3. ^ Kahn, Eve M. (January 8, 2009). "Wired: Preserving the Installations of Richard Lippold". The New York Times. Retrieved January 21, 2022.
4. ^ Lippold, Richard (1949–1950). "Variation Number 7: Full Moon. 1949–50". The Museum of Modern Art. Retrieved November 28, 2021. "Not on view... Medium: Brass rods, nickel-chromium and stainless steel wire; Credit: Mrs. Simon Guggenheim Fund;"
5. ^ Lippold, Richard. "Variation Number 7: Full Moon [sculpture] / (photographed..." Learning Lab. Smithsonian Institution. Retrieved November 28, 2021. "photographed by Walter Rosenblum"
6. ^ Wen, Lily (December 8, 2010). "Variation Number 7: Full Moon". Macaulay at Baruch NYC Tourist Guide. Retrieved November 28, 2021.
7. ^ "Walking Tour: Harkness Graduate Center". Harvard Law School. February 15, 2005. Retrieved July 29, 2010.
8. ^ Lippold, Richard (1953–1956). "Variation within a Sphere, Number 10: The Sun". The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Retrieved November 28, 2021. "Medium: Gold-filled wire, 22 K.; Credit Line: Fletcher Fund, 1956;"
9. ^ Joan Marter. The Grove Encyclopedia of American Art, (Google Books link), Oxford University Press, 2011, pp. 172–73, (ISBN 0195335791), (ISBN 9780195335798).
10. ^ "Longview National Bank". USBankLocations.com. Retrieved November 28, 2021.
11. ^ "The Museum of Wine in Art". Château Mouton Rothschild. Retrieved November 28, 2021.
12. ^ Lippold, Richard. "Mouton Rothschild label for 1959". Château Mouton Rothschild. Retrieved November 28, 2021.
13. ^ "Archived copy". Archived from the original on October 9, 2007. Retrieved March 27, 2006.`{{cite web}}`: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
14. ^ "1971-01-02.pdf" (PDF). Retrieved April 6, 2023.
15. ^ Trevor Dannatt
16. ^ "Modern Hotel Opening In Riyadh This Month". The New York Times. June 22, 1975. Retrieved November 28, 2021. "The first modern, international hotel in Saudi Arabia, the Riyadh Inter‐Continental, is scheduled to open its 200 airconditioned rooms to guests this month. Built at a cost of about $40‐million, including a conference center, the hotel has been eagerly awaited by visitors whose growing numbers far exceed the capital's existing space. Inter‐Continental was chosen by the Saudi Arabian Government as the first international group to develop hotel facilities and provide the personnel to run them."
17. ^ "InterContinental Riyadh – Meeting Rooms & Event Space". Meetings & Conventions. Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Retrieved November 28, 2021.
18. ^ "IHG expands luxury offering in Saudi Arabia with signing of InterContinental Durrat Al Riyadh". ihg development. Retrieved November 28, 2021.
19. ^ Nawrocki, Dennis Alan (1999). Art in Detroit Public Places. Wayne State University Press. ISBN 978-0-8143-2702-9.
20. ^ Nawrocki, Dennis Alan (2008). Art in Detroit Public Places. Wayne State University Press. ISBN 978-0-8143-3378-5. "construction by Richard Lippold suspended from the ceiling of the Fairlane Town Center in suburban Dearborn was de-installed pending conservation"
21. ^ a b Lippold, Richard. "RICHARD LIPPOLD SCULPTURE 1947. New York: Willard Gallery, [1947]. First solo exhibition". Modernism101. Retrieved November 28, 2021. "Original edition. Tan paper sheet printed on both sides and double folded as issued. Artwork, list of displayed works and Yeats quote. Lippold's first solo show...8.25 x 11 folded exhibition announcement for the exhibition from April 12 – May 8, 1948. Mr. Lippold first exhibited his sculpture in the group show Origins of Modern Sculpture at the City Art Museum in St. Louis in 1945 and had his first solo show in 1947 at the Willard Gallery in New York, where he continued to exhibit periodically until the early 1970's."
22. ^ "Bulletin of the City Art Museum of St. Louis archives". onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu. Retrieved November 28, 2021. "Bulletin of the City Art Museum of St. Louis was a publication on art and on the museum now known as the St. Louis Art Museum, published in the 20th century."
23. ^ "List of American exhibitions on French sculpture and French seminal exhibitions, since 1853". French Sculpture Census. Retrieved November 28, 2021. "1946 DETROIT / SAINT LOUIS: Origins of Modern Sculpture (frenchsculpture.org, a project by Laure de Margerie, funded by the Nasher Sculpture Center, the Institut National d'Histoire de l'Art, the Musée d'Orsay, the Ecole du Louvre, and the Musée Rodin)"

## External links

[edit]

* Lippold in the Columbia Encyclopedia
* Marika Herskovic, New York School Abstract Expressionists Artists Choice by Artists, (New York School Press, 2000.) ISBN 0-9677994-0-6
* The 1959 Chateau Mouton Rothschild Label by: Richard Lippold
* Richard Lippold "Shapes of the New Sculpture" The Baltimore Museum of Art: Baltimore, Maryland, 1964 Accessed June 26, 2012
* Richard Lippold & Orpheus and Apollo

Authority control databases

International|

* ISNI
* VIAF
* FAST
* WorldCat

National|

* Germany
* United States
* France
* BnF data
* Israel

Artists|

* ULAN
* MusicBrainz
* RKD Artists
* Museum of Modern Art

Other|

* IdRef
* SNAC
* Yale LUX