Good Friends in Chicago

Good Friends in Chicago is a double-tiered sculpture made of welded steel. Flat rectangles are welded to half-circle shapes, creating the appearance of two unsteady tables set one atop the other. The more stable lower tier has two crossed metal bars that function as its legs on one side, anchoring it to the ground. In contrast, the upper section suggests a precariously maintained balance and the potential for movement. A long, thin steel bar runs across one of its edges, a handle inviting viewers to set the work in motion.

Edwards welded Good Friends in Chicago in 1972 for an exhibition at the Wabash Transit Gallery at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. The invitation to exhibit came from Emilio Cruz (1938–2004), a painter who taught at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and ran its gallery. However, as Edwards later recalled, the exhibition did not provide funds for the shipment of sculptures. He decided he could make a new sculpture in Chicago if he arrived with ideas and could visit a scrapyard. He also knew he could borrow equipment and studio space from his friend Richard Hunt (1935–2023), a Chicago sculptor. Hunt’s welding studio was a repurposed electrical substation in northern Chicago, most likely the site where Edwards made Good Friends in Chicago.

This sculpture is part of Edwards’s “rocker” series, begun in 1970 with Homage to Coco, a work named after his grandmother and inspired by memories of her rocking chair. Edwards began to make rocking sculptures because he could fashion a sense of balance and syncopation by adjusting the weights of various parts of the sculpture. He wanted to create endless variations of pendular swinging motion. While the kinetic sculptures of Jean Tinguely (1925–1991) and Alexander Calder (1898–1976) involve irregular movement, Edwards’s works rock delicately back and forth in a regular rhythm. And whereas Tinguely often included motors and Calder relied on air and gravity to generate movement, Edwards’s massive rockers engage the human body, their rocking motion activated by the viewer. The playful, almost soothing kinetic rockers contrast with the artist’s bold, more political abstract sculptures made from barbed wire, chains, and welded steel.

This sculpture’s title refers to Edwards’s good friends Cruz and Hunt and to his co-exhibitors Sam Gilliam (1933–2022) and William T. Williams (b. 1942). Works by Edwards, Gilliam, and Williams had been included in a large group exhibition at the Studio Museum in Harlem in 1969, but this Chicago show marked the first in a series of three-person exhibitions featuring these artists. Their friendships lasted throughout their lives, and all three men have spoken about their individual responses to abstraction. Good Friends in Chicago may also conjure a metaphorical interpretation of friendship: the sculptural pieces rely on one another; one remains stable to support the other’s movement.

  

Interconnections: Edwards. Gilliam. Williams, Wabash Transit Gallery of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Illinois, November 1–30, 1972. [exh. cat.]

Melvin Edwards: Sculptor, The Studio Museum Harlem, New York, February 26–March 26, 1978. [exh cat]

Melvin Edwards, P.S. 1 Contemporary Art Center, Queens, New York, 1978.

3 Sculptors, The Bronx Museum of Arts, New York; Studio Museum Harlem, New York, 1979

Melvin Edwards Sculpture: A Thirty-Year Retrospective 1963–1993, Neuberger Museum of Art, Purchase, NY (organizer). Venues: Neuberger Museum of Art, Purchase, NY, April 4–June 27, 1993; The Art Museum at Florida International University, Miami, Florida; Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire; McNay Art Museum, San Antonio, Texas. [exh. cat.]

Melvin Edwards: Five Decades, Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas, Texas (organizer). Venues: Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas, Texas, January 31–May 10, 2015; Zimmerli Museum of Art, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey, September 1, 2015–January 10, 2016; Columbus Museum of Art, Ohio, February 12–May 8, 2016. [exh. cat.]

Gedeon, Lucinda, ed. Melvin Edwards Sculpture: a thirty-year Retrospective, 1963–1993. Seattle: University of Washington Press and Neuberger Museum of Art, SUNY, 1993. Text, pp. 90-91, ill. plate 99, p. 98 (color).

Craft, Catherine, ed.Melvin Edwards: Five Decades. Dallas, Texas: Nasher Sculpture Center. Text p. 23, ill. pl. 46.

Craft, Catherine and Melvin Edwards, “Conversations with Melvin Edwards. Extended Version,” (2015).

Colpitt, Frances. “Review of Melvin Edwards: Five Decades”, CAA.Reviews (August 11, 2016).