ABSTRACT
The sculptors highlighted in sought a balance between the real and the ideal to challenge the triumphant doughboy in ways that were nuanced, politically viable, and accessible to a broad public. Bashka Paeff, for example, sculpted one of the most striking US memorials–the overtly pacifist Sailors and Soldiers Memorial in Kittery, Maine. Paeff's sculpture, criticized as an indictment of patriotic motherhood, is all the more notable considering the relatively new professional presence that women sculptors had in the public sphere, as well as the still contentious attitudes toward pacifism in the United States. Art by women more directly related to anti-war themes also may have played a role in inspiring the fervent protectiveness of Paeff's central maternal figure in Sacrifices of War and its strong political statement. The interwar period in which Paeff designed and dedicated her memorial was marked by renewed peace activism, pacifist activities were tempered by right-wing groups who persisted in associating anti-militarism with communism.
