Engineering in the Abstract
By Henry Petroski
How Manierre Dawson made the transition from drafting table to easel
This Article From Issue
January-February 2013
Volume 101, Number 1
Page 22
DOI: 10.1511/2013.100.22
On two previous occasions in this column, I have written about the sculptor Alexander Calder, who earned a degree in mechanical engineering and worked as an engineer before undertaking the formal study of art (see “Once an Engineer …,” July–August 2009, pp. 282–285; and “Portrait of the Artist as a Young Engineer,” September–October 2012, pp. 368–373). I have continued to think about how Calder’s engineering education directly or indirectly may have affected his way of looking at the world as a person generally and as an artist in particular. And I have thought more broadly about how such training shapes the way any engineer views the world.
Photograph courtesy of the Dawson Estate. The Newberry Library.
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