Donald Lipski
Encyclopedia
Donald Lipski is an American sculptor. He is best known for his provocative works with objects, his installation work and his large scale public works.
, Illinois in 1947. He was raised in the northern suburb of Highland Park
, the son and grandson of bicycle dealers. Although his first welded sculptures as a teen won him The Scholastic Art Award in high school, he was a history major and anti-war activist at The University of Wisconsin, Madison
, earning a B.A. in American History in 1970. In Madison, Lipski discovered ceramics working with clay-world legend Don Reitz. This led him to an MFA in ceramics from Cranbrook Academy of Art in 1973, where he studied with Richard DeVore
and Michael Hall. Lipski taught at The University of Oklahoma, Norman from 1973–77, when he moved to New York
.
Lipski enjoyed rapidly growing recognition with his early installation Gathering Dust, thousands of tiny sculptures pinned to the wall, first at Artists’ Space in 1978, and soon after in a Projects show at The Museum of Modern Art. In 1978 his enigmatic, poetic manipulation and transformation of found objects won him the first of three National Endowment For the Arts
awards, followed by a Guggenheim Fellowship
in 1988, an award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1993, and the Rome Prize
of The American Academy in Rome
in 2000. He is permanently conserved in the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art
, the Corcoran Gallery of Art
in Washington, D.C.
, The Art Institute of Chicago, and dozens of other museums.
Lipski’s pioneering installation works continued in the 1990s with The Bells, at the Contemporary Arts Center in Cincinnati
, The Starry Night
, at Capp Street Project
, San Francisco, Pieces of String Too Short to Save, in the Grand Lobby of The Brooklyn Museum, NY), and The Cauldron at the Parrish Art Museum
, Southampton, New York.
"Process is critical to Donald Lipski's sculpture," writes Stephen Fleischman, Director of the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art
, in his introduction to the exhibition catalogue A Brief History of Twine. "His work celebrates the object at the same time it reveals aspects of the human mind in operation... In Lipski's skilled hands, ordinary fly swatters and ballet shoes become poetic centerpieces of sculpture. Similarly, everyday thought processes — like editing, ordering and compulsivity — are elevated to a heroic level."
“As an heir to the Surrealist tradition, the sculptor explores how context transforms the meaning of found objects, and he possesses the knack at composing fantastical stories from unexpected combinations of materials. What sets Mr. Lipski above most others who have pursued this well-trodden path is the quirky, inventive quality to the problems his work poses and the strange, graceful eloquence of his solutions.” -Michael Kimmelman
In recent years, Lipski has focused his efforts on creating large-scale works for public spaces and is today one of the most identifiable, prolific and original public artists in The United States. Among his most celebrated works are The Yearling
, outside the Denver Public Library
(originally exhibited by The Public Art Fund
at Doris Freedman Plaza
, Central Park
, New York, 1997), Sirshasana, hanging in the Grand Central Market, Grand Central Terminal
in New York City, and F.I.S.H. at The San Antonio River Walk
, in Texas
. There are twenty others across the United States.
Donald Lipski currently lives and works in Philadelphia, PA. He is represented by Galerie Lelong in New York.
LIFE
Donald Lipski was born in ChicagoChicago
Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...
, Illinois in 1947. He was raised in the northern suburb of Highland Park
Highland Park, Illinois
Highland Park is a suburban municipality in Lake County, Illinois, United States, about north of downtown Chicago. As of 2009, the population is 33,492. Highland Park is one of several municipalities located on the North Shore of the Chicago Metropolitan Area.-Overview:Highland Park was founded...
, the son and grandson of bicycle dealers. Although his first welded sculptures as a teen won him The Scholastic Art Award in high school, he was a history major and anti-war activist at The University of Wisconsin, Madison
Madison
- Place names :* Madison, Wisconsin, the largest city by the name and the state capital of Wisconsin* Madison, Alabama* Madison, Arkansas* Madison, California* Madison, Connecticut* Madison, Florida* Madison, Georgia* Madison, Illinois* Madison, Indiana...
, earning a B.A. in American History in 1970. In Madison, Lipski discovered ceramics working with clay-world legend Don Reitz. This led him to an MFA in ceramics from Cranbrook Academy of Art in 1973, where he studied with Richard DeVore
Richard DeVore
Richard DeVore was an American ceramicist that was born in Toledo, Ohio in 1933. He earned a B.Ed. degree with an art major from the University of Toledo in 1955, and received an M.F.A. from the Cranbrook Academy of Art in 1957. In 1966 DeVore became head of the ceramics department at Cranbrook...
and Michael Hall. Lipski taught at The University of Oklahoma, Norman from 1973–77, when he moved to New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
.
Lipski enjoyed rapidly growing recognition with his early installation Gathering Dust, thousands of tiny sculptures pinned to the wall, first at Artists’ Space in 1978, and soon after in a Projects show at The Museum of Modern Art. In 1978 his enigmatic, poetic manipulation and transformation of found objects won him the first of three National Endowment For the Arts
National Endowment for the Arts
The National Endowment for the Arts is an independent agency of the United States federal government that offers support and funding for projects exhibiting artistic excellence. It was created by an act of the U.S. Congress in 1965 as an independent agency of the federal government. Its current...
awards, followed by a Guggenheim Fellowship
Guggenheim Fellowship
Guggenheim Fellowships are American grants that have been awarded annually since 1925 by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to those "who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the arts." Each year, the foundation makes...
in 1988, an award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1993, and the Rome Prize
American Academy in Rome
The American Academy in Rome is a research and arts institution located on the Gianicolo in Rome.- History :In 1893, a group of American architects, painters and sculptors met regularly while planning the fine arts section of the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition...
of The American Academy in Rome
American Academy in Rome
The American Academy in Rome is a research and arts institution located on the Gianicolo in Rome.- History :In 1893, a group of American architects, painters and sculptors met regularly while planning the fine arts section of the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition...
in 2000. He is permanently conserved in the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art
Metropolitan Museum of Art
The Metropolitan Museum of Art is a renowned art museum in New York City. Its permanent collection contains more than two million works, divided into nineteen curatorial departments. The main building, located on the eastern edge of Central Park along Manhattan's Museum Mile, is one of the...
, the Corcoran Gallery of Art
Corcoran Gallery of Art
The Corcoran Gallery of Art is the largest privately supported cultural institution in Washington, DC. The museum's main focus is American art. The permanent collection includes works by Rembrandt, Eugène Delacroix, Edgar Degas, Thomas Gainsborough, John Singer Sargent, Claude Monet, Pablo...
in Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, "the District", or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States. On July 16, 1790, the United States Congress approved the creation of a permanent national capital as permitted by the U.S. Constitution....
, The Art Institute of Chicago, and dozens of other museums.
Lipski’s pioneering installation works continued in the 1990s with The Bells, at the Contemporary Arts Center in Cincinnati
Contemporary Arts Center
The Contemporary Arts Center is a pioneering contemporary art museum located in Cincinnati, Ohio. The CAC is a non-collecting museum that focuses on new developments in painting, sculpture, photography, architecture, performance art and new media...
, The Starry Night
The Starry Night
The Starry Night is a painting by Dutch post-impressionist artist Vincent van Gogh. The painting depicts the view outside his sanitarium room window at night, although it was painted from memory during the day. Since 1941 it has been in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New...
, at Capp Street Project
Capp Street Project
Capp Street Project was established as an experimental art space in 1983 in San Francisco, California and was the first visual arts residency in the United States dedicated solely to the creation and presentation of new art installations....
, San Francisco, Pieces of String Too Short to Save, in the Grand Lobby of The Brooklyn Museum, NY), and The Cauldron at the Parrish Art Museum
Parrish Art Museum
The Parrish Art Museum is the oldest cultural institution on the East End of Long Island, uniquely situated within one of the most concentrated creative communities in the United States...
, Southampton, New York.
"Process is critical to Donald Lipski's sculpture," writes Stephen Fleischman, Director of the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art
Madison Museum of Contemporary Art
The Madison Museum of Contemporary Art — MMoCA, formerly known as the Madison Art Center, is an art museum located in Madison, Wisconsin. A three-story glass facade "icon" on the corner of State and Henry Streets serves as the museum's main staircase, as well as its architectural...
, in his introduction to the exhibition catalogue A Brief History of Twine. "His work celebrates the object at the same time it reveals aspects of the human mind in operation... In Lipski's skilled hands, ordinary fly swatters and ballet shoes become poetic centerpieces of sculpture. Similarly, everyday thought processes — like editing, ordering and compulsivity — are elevated to a heroic level."
“As an heir to the Surrealist tradition, the sculptor explores how context transforms the meaning of found objects, and he possesses the knack at composing fantastical stories from unexpected combinations of materials. What sets Mr. Lipski above most others who have pursued this well-trodden path is the quirky, inventive quality to the problems his work poses and the strange, graceful eloquence of his solutions.” -Michael Kimmelman
Michael Kimmelman
Michael Kimmelman is an author, critic, columnist and pianist. He is the chief architecture critic for The New York Times and written on issues of public housing, community development and social responsibility. He was the paper's longtime chief art critic and, in 2007, created the Abroad column,...
In recent years, Lipski has focused his efforts on creating large-scale works for public spaces and is today one of the most identifiable, prolific and original public artists in The United States. Among his most celebrated works are The Yearling
The Yearling
The Yearling is a 1946 Technicolor family film drama made by MGM. It was directed by Clarence Brown and produced by Sidney Franklin. The screenplay was by Paul Osborn and John Lee Mahin , adapted from the novel of the same name by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings...
, outside the Denver Public Library
Denver Public Library
The Denver Public Library is the public library of the city of Denver, Colorado in the United States. Its administrative headquarters is on the 7th floor of the Central Library in Downtown Denver. , the library system had 2,519,977 items in its collection, and a library card base of 417,616 local...
(originally exhibited by The Public Art Fund
Public Art Fund
The Public Art Fund is a non-profit organization founded in 1977 by Doris Freedman , a Director of New York City's Department of Cultural Affairs, and the President of the Municipal Art Society. They have organized highly visible artists' projects, new commissions, installations and exhibitions in...
at Doris Freedman Plaza
Doris Freedman
Doris Chanin Freedman was a pioneer in the field of public art, active in New York City. She was the daughter of architect Irwin Salmon Chanin and his wife Sylvia Schofler....
, Central Park
Central Park
Central Park is a public park in the center of Manhattan in New York City, United States. The park initially opened in 1857, on of city-owned land. In 1858, Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux won a design competition to improve and expand the park with a plan they entitled the Greensward Plan...
, New York, 1997), Sirshasana, hanging in the Grand Central Market, Grand Central Terminal
Grand Central Terminal
Grand Central Terminal —often incorrectly called Grand Central Station, or shortened to simply Grand Central—is a terminal station at 42nd Street and Park Avenue in Midtown Manhattan in New York City, United States...
in New York City, and F.I.S.H. at The San Antonio River Walk
San Antonio River Walk
The San Antonio River Walk is a network of walkways along the banks of the San Antonio River, one story beneath downtown San Antonio, Texas...
, in Texas
Texas
Texas is the second largest U.S. state by both area and population, and the largest state by area in the contiguous United States.The name, based on the Caddo word "Tejas" meaning "friends" or "allies", was applied by the Spanish to the Caddo themselves and to the region of their settlement in...
. There are twenty others across the United States.
Donald Lipski currently lives and works in Philadelphia, PA. He is represented by Galerie Lelong in New York.
PUBLIC COLLECTIONS
- Asian American Art Center, New York
- Brooklyn Museum, New York, New York
- Chicago Art Institute
- Cincinnati Art Museum
- Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
- Dayton Art Institute, Dayton, Ohio
- Denver Art Museum, Denver, Colorado
- Detroit Institute of Art, Detroit, Michigan
- Indianapolis Museum of Art, Indianapolis, Indiana
- Jewish Museum, New York, New York
- Laumeier Sculpture Park, St. Louis, Missouri
- Miami Art Museum
- Menil Collection, Houston, Texas
- Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, New York
- Minneapolis Museum of Fine Art, Minneapolis, Minnesota
- Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago
- Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles
- Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Massachusetts
- Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas
- Museum of Modern Art, Miami
- New Orleans Museum of Art, New Orleans, Louisiana
- North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh
- Raymond Nasher Sculpture Collection, Dallas, Texas
- Panza Collection, Italy
- Phoenix Museum of Art, Phoenix, Arizona
- Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego, California
- Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, Minnesota
- Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, New York
- Witherspoon Museum of Art, Greensboro, NC
- Yale University Art Gallery
BOOKS
- -Donald Lipski, retrospective catalogue, The Bawag Foundation, Vienna, 1999-2000 (text David Levy Strauss).
- -Arnason, H.H., History of Modern Art, 3rd Ed. New York: Harry N. Abrams Inc, 1986.
- -Bellamy, Peter, The Artist Project. New York: IN Publishing, 1991.
- -Heartney, Eleanor, et al., The Refco Collection. Chicago: Refco Group Ltd, 1990.
- -Pradel, Jean Louis, ed., World Art Trends 1983/84. New York: Harry N. Abrams Inc, 1984.
- -King, Elain, "Donald Lipski" in Artists Observed. Edited by Harvey Sten. New York: Harry N. Abrams Inc, 1986, pp. 38 39.
- -Sultan, Terrie, Donald Lipski: A Brief History of Twine, Madison Art Center, 2000
- -Richer, Francesca and Matthew Rosenzweig eds. No. 1: First Works by 362 Artists. New York: D.A.P., 2005.
- -Bloodworth, Sandra and William Ayres. Along the Way. New York: The Monacelli Press, 2006.
Further reading
- Fleischman, Stephen, and Terrie Sultan. Donald Lipski: A Brief History of Twine. Madison, WI: Madison Art Center, 2000.
- Freedman Gallery, Albright College. Donald Lipski: Poetic Sculpture. Reading, PA, 1990. Text by David S. Rubin.
- Hillwood Art Gallery, Long Island University. Broken Wings: Donald Lipski at Grumman. Brookville, NY, 1987. Text by Judy Collischan Van Wagner.
- Kaufman, Leslie. “Appreciating the Physical World: A Conversation with Donald Lipski.” Sculpture 26 (November 2007): 28–35.
- Kuspit, Donald. Donald Lipski: Building Steam (New York: Germans Van Eck Gallery, 1985).
- Princenthal, Nancy. “Reweaving Old Glory.” Art in America 79 (May 1991): 136–41, 182.
- Saunders, Wade. “Talking Objects: Interviews with Ten Younger Sculptors.” Art in America 73 (November 1985): 110–37.
- Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art. Donald Lipski: Oral History. Winston Salem, NC, 1994.
- Yau, John. Donald Lipski: Who’s Afraid of Red, White, and Blue? Philadelphia: Fabric Workshop, 1991.
- Riley, Jan. The Bells, Contemporary Art Center, Cincinnati, Ohio, 1991
AWARDS
- 2000 -The Rome Prize, American Academy in Rome
- 1993 -Academy Award, American Academy of Arts and Letters
- 1990 -National Endowment For the Arts (Sculpture)
- 1988 -Guggenheim Fellowship
- 1984 -National Endowment For the Arts (Sculpture)
- -New York Foundation on the Arts Fellowship
- -Awards in the Visual Arts
- 1978 -National Endowment For the Arts (Conceptual Art)
- 1965 -Scholastic Art Award
PUBLIC COMMISSIONS
- 2010 -Psyche, Auraria Campus, Denver, CO
- -Jackson, Reno, Nev, –Regional Bus Terminal
- 2009 -The Ziz, Goodyear Ball Park, Goodyear, AZ
- -F.I.S.H., The River Walk, San Antonio, TX
- 2008 -Cowcatcher, Sparks, Nev. –Regional Bus Terminal
- -The Tent, Indianapolis
- 2007 - The Doors, City of Scottsdale, AZ
- -Leaves of Grass, Levine Children's Hospital, Charlotte, NC
- 2006 -The Lorelei Club Minneapolis Central Library
- 2005 -Nails' Tales University of Wisconsin
- -Intimate Apparel & Pearl Earrings Fort Worth Convention Center
- -Sylvia, Arthur City of Chicago
- 2004 -Got Any Jacks? Miami International Airport
- 2003 -Five Easy Pieces, Washington DC Convention Center
- 2001 -Tools, Wellington Webb Municipal Building, Denver, Colorado
- 2000 - Rodin Rodannadanna, Avenue of the Arts, Kansas City
- -Sirshasana, Grand Central Market, Grand Central Terminal, New York City
- 1997 -The Yearling, Doris Friedman Plaza, Central Park, sponsored by The Public Art, Fund, New York (The Yearling now resides at the Denver Public Library)
- -The LaGuardia Suite, Concert Hall, La Guardia High School for Music
PUBLIC COMMISSIONS IN PROGRESS
- Community College of Philadelphia, –Completion date – 2012
- Houston, Water Works Museum, –Completion date – 2012
- Atlanta- Maynard Holbrook Jackson International Terminal-Completion date—2012
- Sacramento Airport – Completion date-2011
- San Diego Public Library -Completion date—2012
- San Antonio Airport – Completion date-2012
- El Monte, CA, Metro Bus Terminal –Completion date—2011
External links
- Donald Lipski website
- Review of Exquisite Copse at Galerie Lelong
- Review of The Starry Night
- http://art.uga.edu/index.php?pt=4&id=140]
- The Doors
- F.I.S.H.
- The Yearling
- Good As Gold
- The Starry Night at Capp Street Project
- Bawag Foundation, Vienna
- Water Lilies #52
- The West Collection
- Got Any Jacks?, Miami Airport
- The Tent, Indianapolis
- Ball? Ball! Wall? Wall!
- The Yearling
- Non-Fiction at Galerie Lelong
- Review of Exquisite Copse at Galerie Lelong
- Review of The Bells at PS1
- Croton-on-Hudson
- Building Steam at Germans Van Eck
- Candlabracadabra at Galerie Lelong
- Poetic Sculpture at The Hudson River Museum
- Piecemaker at The Clocktower