Richard Lippold Explained

Richard Lippold
Birth Date:	3 May 1915
Birth Place:	Milwaukee, Wisconsin, U.S.
Death Place:	Locust Valley, New York, U.S.
Nationality:	American
Known For:	Sculpture

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

Life

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.

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.^[2]

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

• 1949–50, Variation Number 7: Full Moon, at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City^{[3] [4] [5]}
• 1950, World Tree, in Harvard Graduate Center at Harvard Law School in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Walter Gropius, designer^[6]
• 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.^[7]
• 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^[8]
• 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 National Bank, Longview, TX.^[9]
• 1959, Spirit Vine (label art), The Museum of Wine in Art, Château Mouton Rothschild, Pauillac, France.^{[10] [11]}
• 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^[12] 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,^[13]
• 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^{[14] [15] [16] [17]}
• 1976,, 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)^{[18] [19]}

Group exhibitions

• Origins of Modern Sculpture, 1945^[20] Organized by Wilhelm Valentiner^[21]
  • 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

• Willard Gallery 1947,^[22] 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

• 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.

External links

• Lippold in the Columbia Encyclopedia
• Marika Herskovic, New York School Abstract Expressionists Artists Choice by Artists, (New York School Press, 2000.)
• 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

Notes and References

1. Encyclopedia: Encyclopædia Britannica . Richard Lippold (American sculptor) – Britannica Online Encyclopedia . July 29, 2010.
2. News: Kahn . Eve M. . Wired: Preserving the Installations of Richard Lippold . The New York Times . January 8, 2009 . January 21, 2022.
3. Web site: Lippold . Richard . Variation Number 7: Full Moon. 1949–50 . . November 28, 2021 . en . 1949–1950 . Not on view... Medium: Brass rods, nickel-chromium and stainless steel wire; Credit: Mrs. Simon Guggenheim Fund;.
4. Web site: Lippold . Richard . Variation Number 7: Full Moon [sculpture] / (photographed... ]. Learning Lab . . November 28, 2021 . en . photographed by Walter Rosenblum.
5. Web site: Wen . Lily . Variation Number 7: Full Moon . Macaulay at Baruch NYC Tourist Guide . November 28, 2021 . en . December 8, 2010.
6. Web site: Walking Tour: Harkness Graduate Center . . February 15, 2005 . July 29, 2010.
7. Web site: Lippold . Richard . Variation within a Sphere, Number 10: The Sun . . November 28, 2021 . 1953–1956 . Medium: Gold-filled wire, 22 K.; Credit Line: Fletcher Fund, 1956;.
8. [Joan Marter]
9. Web site: Longview National Bank . USBankLocations.com . November 28, 2021.
10. Web site: The Museum of Wine in Art . . November 28, 2021.
11. Web site: Lippold . Richard . Mouton Rothschild label for 1959 . . November 28, 2021.
12. Web site: Archived copy . March 27, 2006 . dead . https://web.archive.org/web/20071009155155/http://www.pencil-of-nature.net/artman/uploads/2003-08-13-01_orpheus.jpg . October 9, 2007 .
13. Web site: 1971-01-02.pdf . April 6, 2023.
14. [Trevor Dannatt]
15. News: Modern Hotel Opening In Riyadh This Month . November 28, 2021 . The New York Times . June 22, 1975 . 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..
16. Web site: InterContinental Riyadh – Meeting Rooms & Event Space . Meetings & Conventions . November 28, 2021 . Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
17. Web site: IHG expands luxury offering in Saudi Arabia with signing of InterContinental Durrat Al Riyadh . ihg development . November 28, 2021 . en.
18. Book: Nawrocki . Dennis Alan . Art in Detroit Public Places . 1999 . Wayne State University Press . 978-0-8143-2702-9 . en.
19. Book: Nawrocki . Dennis Alan . Art in Detroit Public Places . 2008 . Wayne State University Press . 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 . en.
20. Web site: Bulletin of the City Art Museum of St. Louis archives . onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu . 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..
21. Web site: List of American exhibitions on French sculpture and French seminal exhibitions, since 1853 . . 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).
22. Web site: Lippold . Richard . RICHARD LIPPOLD SCULPTURE 1947. New York: Willard Gallery, [1947]. First solo exhibition. ]. Modernism101 . 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..