Art: Cymbalism?

Though minuscule by comparison with Calder, Seymour Lipton’s 9-ft.-tall Archangel looms large in Manhattan’s austere Philharmonic Hall. Unveiled last week, the sculpture at first appropriately suggests a couple of tuba players lost in the lobby. Though critics liked the work, its creator lost them when he tried to explain what it meant. Of course, said Lipton when asked if his dominant, bell-like forms were actually cymbals. They are symbols, he said, of “life’s positive forces” and man’s ability to survive. Are they cymbals? Of course, said the sculptor, they are . . . cymbals. Symbolic ones.