Bearing Witness

Martin Puryear’s Bearing Witness is a colossal sculpture of hammer-formed and welded bronze. While its taut surfaces and hull-like forms may recall those of a boat (it was fabricated at a precision shipbuilding facility), the sculpture’s familiar-yet-enigmatic shapes allow viewers to create their own associations. Puryear has said: “In my work, I aim for a point where organic form—or forms which suggest nature and organic processes—can coexist with forms which are clearly cultural.” He also intends this artwork to be perceived as a handcrafted object, despite its immense size and need to withstand the climatic conditions of its exterior location. Puryear allowed the weld-marks and other idiosyncratic details of the sculpture's fabrication to be seen, much as he does in his smaller-scale artworks that are made of wood.

The sculpture’s poetic title similarly invites multiple interpretations. Puryear often selects titles that are, in his words, “provocative and open up possible ways for people to look at the work and think about the work rather than close it down.” Bearing Witness suggests an observer, perhaps even the collective consciousness of the public.

The location of Bearing Witness affects its meaning, as well. The sculpture stands in the grand, semicircular courtyard in front of the Reagan Building’s Woodrow Wilson Center. Viewed from certain angles, the rounded shape at the top of Bearing Witness forms a concentric arc with the curving façade of the building. Architect James Ingo Freed viewed the sculpture “as a column pinning the space to the ground.” The plaza’s space is vast, as are the two massive federal buildings that surround it. Puryear’s sculpture serves as both a physical and metaphorical intermediary between viewers and the government buildings. In a 1998 Sculpture magazine interview, Puryear stated: “This is one of the more challenging pieces I’ve done, because it’s in such an official public place... Its context is weighted. For myself, I wanted my work to be directed toward people rather than toward the government. In a democracy, the people talk back to the government.”