They are planning to put a memorial to President Eisenhower in Washington DC, right in the middle of all the beautiful classical buildings and monuments, but the planned design is anything but beautiful. The design they chose was by postmodern "artist" Frank Gehry, and it consists of huge, 80 foot tall metal posts with screens stuck up on them. Right in the middle of DC. Blocking the view of the Capitol Building. The only image of Eisenhower will be a statue of him as a barefoot farmboy in Kansas. It says nothing about the great leader he became, nothing about the world he protected in WWII, and helped to forge in the early days of the Cold War. It erases the idea of virtue and the ideals that human beings should be inspired to when they see monuments to great men. Call your congressmen and senators today!
There is an alternative - the National Civic Art Society has hosted their own contest to design a better memorial, and they have stunning results. Any one of these monuments would be a wonderful addition to the scenery of Washington DC, and be a fitting tribute to a president who shaped America's greatness in the 20th Century perhaps more than any other until Reagan. So, again, call your congressmen, email them, do whatever it takes.
Now, there is more going on here than just an aesthetic abomination that should never get zoning approval in an historic location, and never would in a civilized part of America. There are ideas at play, and it must have Ike spinning in his grave. See, the style of the proposed monument is postmodern, and shows a lot of the international style (i.e. Marxism). It is not suitable for a Cold Warrior and should not be built.
Actually, apart from the location, and the fact it's not actually a memorial to Ike, I kinda like the proposed design. It's a little more Stalinist than the straight-up International Style (Stalin, like Hitler, had taste). Apart from having Ike memorialized as a general, rather than as a barefoot bratling, the screens (is that some rural scene painted on them?) are the only thing I would insist on changing—just the unadorned columns would look better.
ReplyDeleteThat said, the five-star design, above, is infinitely better. Eisenhower, after all, is one of only five 5-star generals ever (George Washington and John J. Pershing are both 6-stars, the former having been posthumously promoted so nobody would outrank him, which is awesome). Only nine people have ever been 5-star general officers (there's also four admirals).
For me (of course), his most important achievement was signing the National Aeronautics and Space Act of 1958, which established NASA. He also signed the bill creating ARPA, and, thus, invented the gorramn Internet.
Oh, no, wait, wasn't that Al Gore?
Yeah, in another setting the columns by themselves would look stern and kind of badass, although it would be better if they didn't look quite so pipe-like. It's supposed to be a monument, not a Mario level. It would be a cool monument for a battle or something. But Washington is full of classical architecture, not modern, and it doesn't fit in.
ReplyDeleteAnd yeah, creating NASA and ARPA was pretty awesome.