Steering Wheel

The time was the early 20th century and the setting was a trade show of the latest industrial inventions. Two now-famous artist friends, Contantin Brancusi and Marcel Duchamp, were walking through the show and came up to a propeller from a large ship. Duchamp turned to Brancusi and challenged him: beat that. In other words, make a modern sculpture as beautiful as a functionally-designed propeller. The revelation that industrial design has aesthetic qualities is one reason why John R. Morgan's Waterwitch Outboard Motor (left) is on display at the MIA. With the advancement of industry in the late 19th and early 20th century, the notion of good design began to spread globally in advanced industrial nations. Roughly around the same time, photographers began to look closely at industrial objects, cars, typewriters, etc. In fact, they often looked very closely, capturing the alluring details of industrial design with tight, up-close shots of designs. Renger-Patzsch, for example, shows us the steering wheel, not the car. He focuses the camera on the circular gauges, steering wheel, bolts, and the brushed pattern of the dashboard. Renger-Patzsch beat that by showing that in detail.