Jim Brothers’ Busts of Eisenhower’s Staff

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Omar Bradley and Sir Arthur Tedder, by Jim Brothers

The National D-Day Memorial, who’s been a client since 1998, has commissioned Jim Brothers through me to execute bronze busts of Eisenhower’s allied staff.  These include Bradley, Tedder, Ramsay, Bedell Smith, Leigh-Mallory and Montgomery (pain-in-the-neck though he surely was). 

The busts as they’re completed are being arrayed in this memorial garden, around a monument of Eisenhower, also by Jim.  The first casting of the Eisenhower is in the Capitol Building in DC.  Is all this a great honor?  Enormously.  Only Eisenhower could have brought all these diverse personalities together, both British and American, then elicited great performances from each, often taking back seat to their raging egos.  That is no mean trick.  Remember, he was also the one who warned us against the dangers of the Military Industrial Complex, and how it would lead to corporate wars.  Hmm.

If you’ll look at these busts, and the other pieces on Jim’s page, you’ll see the figurative power that this man commands.  When I opened my gallery in 1991, no one would take him or me seriously because we were from Kansas.  Seems rather amusing now.

Is this work strikingly different from the contemporary work we do?  You bet.  Is just as valid?  You bet. 

2 thoughts on “Jim Brothers’ Busts of Eisenhower’s Staff”

  1. Footnote: Ike’s actual reference was to the Congressional-Military-Industrial Complex, it was later edited to the shorter version for his speech. Keep THAT in mind while you watch those politicans that everyone knows are in the pockets of the corporations. Ike actually foresaw everything that we are dealing with today in terms of public corruption! (And spurious wars, but that’s another story.)

    Thanks for all the good advice to artists Paul, we all love ya.

  2. Thanks for the clarification. As I’m sure you noted, there’s a lot of understatement in my remarks. Also absent is the sense of outrage, though I feel it deeply.

    The policies of this White House, and all their corporate buddies, are not what the founding fathers had in mind when they signed the Constitution. That’s why I wrote a screenplay about the war. And though it’s been praised in LA, we’ll see if anyone is able to produce it, since it’s pretty damned candid. But of course this kind of corruption and abuse of power is as old as civilization itself. Just ask the Spartans. Or the present-day Chinese.

    And that’s about as political as I’ll get on this blog, since its purpose is otherwise.

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