Conelrad is running Bill Geerhart’s fantastic and utterly bizarre article about a mushroom cloud sculpture made by Robert Lewis — the co-pilot of the plane that dropped the a-bomb on Hiroshima. (Lewis named his work “God’s Wind,” but I think he should have called it “This is Not a Phallus.”)
Decades ago, Dieter Rosellen dubbed an unusual piece of art acquired by his best friend as “The ‘Shroom.” He still refers to the white Italian marble mushroom cloud sculpture by that nickname.The artist’s more formal (and thought provoking) title for the work is etched into its base: ‘God’s Wind’ at Hiroshima? The sculptor, Robert Lewis–the co-pilot of the Enola Gay, the plane that dropped the first atomic bomb in warfare–died in 1983 and Rosellen’s pal, author and psychologist Glenn Van Warrebey, passed away twenty-one years later. The ‘Shroom survives both of them.
This is the story of the sculpture’s evolution: From its birth in the tortured imagination of an atomic veteran to its current state–an unsettling curiosity that has to be seen to be believed. It is also a tale of the intersecting lives of the man who created it and the man who exploited it.
Bill Geerhart on The ‘Shroom, a sculpture by Robert Lewis, co-pilot of the Enola Gay