Large Scale. Fabricating Sculpture in the 1960s and 1970s

Prior to 1966, if artists wanted to create works larger than their studios or metalworking abilities allowed, they had to turn to industrial manufacturers, usually steel fabricators or boat builders, who, not surprisingly, were often unable to accommodate the creative process of making art. The opening that spring of Lippincott, Inc. changed that and the direction of American art in the process. Functioning as an extension of the artists’ studios, Lippincott, Inc. was also a new kind of all-in-one sculpture production center that put the tools of industrial fabrication in the hands of artists, allowing them to produce at a scale they had previously only dreamt of on paper. Over the years of the shop’s operation from 1966 to 1994, Lippincott, Inc. has produced sculptures by nearly one hundred artists. Fortuitously, the shop’s founders, Donald Lippincott and Roxanne Everett, meticulously documented the working processes of some of the most important American artists of the twentieth century such as Claes Oldenburg, Louise Nevelson, Ellsworth Kelly, Robert Indiana, and Barnett Newman. Drawing on the vast collection of the images in the Lippincott archive, Large Scale presents over three hundred photographs of these artists and their iconic large scale works including Newman’s Broken Obelisk, Indiana’s Love, Oldenburg’s Mouse, and Rosenthal’s Alamo, many of which have been previously unseen. These rare, behind-the-scenes images offer fresh insight on an important chapter of art history and compel us all to see these enduring works with fresh eyes. An introduction by curator Patterson Sims places the evolution of Lippincott, Inc. in the context of the history of American art.

Jonathan Lippincott is the design manager at Farrar, Straus and Giroux. He has worked as a book designer for seventeen years and lives in New York.