Synergizing Space: Sculpture, Architecture, and Richard Lippold at Lincoln Center

Abstract

During the 1950s and 1960s Richard Lippold was a leading practitioner among a select group of artists who were frequently commissioned by modernist architects to create large-scale, site-determined sculptures for interior threshold spaces. These collaborative projects offered new models for the integration of art and architecture during the postwar period, but also resulted in intense debates, with the resulting work simultaneously celebrated as some of the most important examples of American sculpture being produced at the time and derided for being nothing more than shiny, metal decoration within architectural schemes. This article focuses on two of Lippold’s most high-profile commissioned sculptures: Orpheus and Apollo (1962) in Philharmonic Hall at Lincoln Center in New York, and Gemini II (1966) in the Jesse H. Jones Hall for the Performing Arts in Houston. It argues that the postwar principle of synergy provides a framework to assess the stakes of the more pronounced relationship between sculpture and architecture at midcentury.