Tuesday, July 12, 2022

Cars, like everything else. 

The understanding man scrutinizes the car serenely and comprehends ‘what is for what’: why it has so many cylinders and why it has big wheels, where its transmission is situated, and why its rear is cut in an acute angle and its radiator unpolished. This is the way one should read.

Viktor Shklovsky

These, then, are what I have facetiously called the ideological antecedents of the Rolls-Royce radiator. The composition of this radiator sums up, as it were, twelve centuries of Anglo-Saxon preoccupations and aptitudes: it conceals an admirable piece of engineering behind a majestic Palladian temple front; but this Palladian temple front is surmounted by the wind-blown “Silver Lady” in whom art nouveau appears infused with the spirit of unmitigated “romanticism.” The radiator and the radiator cap have not been changed since the first Rolls-Royce car was delivered at the beginning of 1905; the “Silver Lady,” modeled by Charles Sykes, R. A., was added as early as 1911. 

Erwin Panofsky 

So I finally just stopped the car and made him get out. I just flat left him there by the road, man, and just drove off. Said, 'See you later, Max.' 

Robert Irwin 

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