the inner workings: From Beast to Bronze (Research & Thoughts on the Animal Sculptures of Arthur Putnam)

In the San Diego Museum of Art, on the right wing of the base floor is a gallery entitled Ferocious Bronze, a collection of cire-perdue sculptures of pumas, tigers, lions, horses, and other animals, their movements stilled within their bronze molds. The dark, aged-bronze stands out against the sharp yellow walls, and the overhead lights throw distorted shadows onto the floor.

The jaws of each puma are wide and gaping, claws extended and muscles rippling. How were these sculptures made? And how did Arthur Putnam capture the essence of these animals so vividly? Although the sculptures are not smooth in texture and the features of the beasts are rough, the tension of the joints and the limbs of the pumas portray a sense of motion. The eye of the observer is drawn from a snarling maw to the sloping of a spine to the sharp curve of claws. In all, the sculptures portray a sense of carnality and rawness.

Putnam never received formal education in the arts – he had the most basic instruction in drawing techniques then drew from his own innate ability to sculpt and to transform, preserving the most constituent qualities of blood and bone to bronze. Even after Putnam became successful enough to travel to Europe, he didn’t travel to receive an education; instead, he sought out a visual experience.

In San Diego, Putnam was notorious in the zoo, where he would draw animals, and in the wild as well. While his lack of a formal education in the arts leaves his sculptures less polished and precise than his contemporaries, Putnam’s sculptures are visceral and raw.

Cire perdue, French for lost wax, was the process that Putnam used to create his metal sculptures. Cire perdue is a long and arduous process, but the resulting sculpture retains the finer details in the sculptor’s original model.

The process begins when a model is made of wax or clay. Putnam began by creating a crude, wire skeleton – four legs, a head, and a tail. Clay is molded around the skeleton. The model is then sectioned off; each section has its own plaster mold made. After assembling the molds, the sculptor casts a thin shell of the sculpture in wax. On top of the wax is comes a ceramic mold – the bottom layer is plaster mold, then wax, then ceramic mold. After pouring wax out of the mold, molten bronze takes its place. The layers are now plaster mold, bronze, ceramic mold. Then when the bronze solidifies, the mold is cracked open, revealing the finished bronze sculpture. Any remaining imperfections are removed by chasing – filing and polishing. The bronze is finished with a torch while applying a chemical to create a patina – a surface tone.

The sculptures of Arthur Putnam are lively and ragged with an animalistic kind of edge. But why pumas? Why lions and snakes and horses and, in some of his sculptures, man? The creatures that Putnam chose to depict were muscular, toned, and noble. There was something extremely attractive to Putnam in the rawness of each creature. To him, there was beauty in their roughness, a characteristic evident in his work.