hidden horse / caw said crows are calling his name

We have all heard of a cowbird, and a horsefly. But might this image qualify as a froghorse, because a closer look reveals that there is indeed a hidden horse in this vintage picture puzzle. Can you find it?

vintage picture puzzle / harmless sleeping puppy dog

Reproduced above (the same image four times, but repositioned and resized) is a Victorian-era “puzzle picture” that was printed on an advertising card in Liverpool UK in the 1870s. The caption read “What is it?” 

Beginning at the top, the first two images are somewhat suggestive (not unlike an inkblot) but require some work to interpret. The third one is more likely to be seen as a human face, albeit greatly distorted. 

But the puzzle is solved at the bottom, when a closer look reveals that all four have resulted from a single photograph of a harmless sleeping puppy dog. For more on embedded figures and picture puzzles, see this brief video, articles on Clemens Gretter, Gobolinks, and camouflage.

ScholarWorks / American Women Camouflage Exhibit

UNI ScholarWorks Exhibit

Five years ago, in 2017, I curated an exhibition of historic government photographs, having to do with the role of American women during World War I, in the development of camouflage. 

The exhibition, consisting of forty vintage photographs, and titled HIDDEN FIGURES, premiered in a multiple-month exhibit at the Betty Strong Encounter Center and Sioux City Lewis and Clark Interpretive Center, in Sioux City IA.

The photographs in the exhibition, supplemented by text captions, have recently been posted on the ScholarWorks website of the Rod Library at the University of Northern Iowa. 

The activities of these women camoufleurs, as well as their connections to the Womens’ Suffrage Movement, are also featured in a recently completed documentary video (free here online), called Art, Women’s Rights, and Camouflage, and in a scholarly essay titled Chicanery and Conspicuousness: Social Repercussions of World War I Ship Camouflage (available online also).

WWI French camouflage cartoons by André Hellé

La Baïonnette

Above A page of camouflage-related comic drawings by World War I French illustrator and toy designer André Hellé, as published in La Baïonnette, c1916.

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Jerrold A. Morris, 100 Years of Canadian Drawings. New York: Methuen, 1980, p. 10—

The lover of drawings has the advantage of being in close contact with the artist’s original concept conveyed in a relatively uncomplicated medium. Drawing, in the widest sense of the term, is the linear element in art least susceptible to manipulation by what [William] Blake called “Blotting” and the Pre-Raphaelites called “Slosh”—we might call it “fudging.” Among painters are many masters of camouflage, what [J.A.D.] Ingres meant when he said that drawing is “the probity of art.”
 

Camoufleur John Wilde in Walter SH Hamady's books

Above Page spread from Reeve Lindberg, John's Apples (Perishable Press, 1995), a Walter Hamady letterpress book, with full-color paintings of apples by John Wilde [WILL-dee].

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John Wilde: Recent Work, April 10-May 3, 2003. New York: Spanierman Gallery, 2003, p. 4—

His [Wilde’s] art interests developed early, as he recalled in 1986: “I have always loved to draw and paint ever since junior high school in Milwaukee. I was particularly fond of drawing imaginary cities, which I then erased and re-created.” In 1938 Wilde enrolled in the art department at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he studied human anatomy with Roland Stebbins and drawing with American Scene painter James Watrous. Shortly after he graduated, in 1942, Wilde was drafted into the army and served four years drawing camouflage and modeling terrain maps for various units (including the Office of Strategic Services, or OSS [precursor to the CIA]), while also meticulously detailing his disgust and dismay with wartime in a 275-page sketchbook. 

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Below Page spread from Walter Hamady and John Wilde, A Hamady Wilde Sampler / Salutations 1995 (Perishable Press, 2001), including a self-portrait drawing by Wilde, presumably painting an apple. And below that, Roy R. Behrens, Mon Dieu. Collage in open-book form (1993). Hamady Collection.

Roy R. Behrens (1993)

Canadian camouflage artist Rowley Walter Murphy

Above Dazzle-camouflaged transport ship (AI colorized), 1942.

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Mary El Cane, "Staff and Nonsense" column, in Sketch (Ontario College of Art), February 27, 1947, p. 1—

Meet the Navy, in the person of Rowley [Walter] Murphy [1891-1975]. Many years of yachting since 1898, he insists readied him for full wartime effort on destroyers corvettes, ad infinitum. Canaling was a specialty with him, and also a possible excuse for some sketching of masters and mates of the tugs and freighters on the Welland Canal. He spent some time sailing the pilot schooner off Halifax harbor, swishing around in a relation of the Bluenose. Admiral Jones kept him busy for a time on the designing of naval camouflage, a job more exacting than people realize. (“Karl, vos is das on dur distance an iceberger?” “Yah, Hermann, idz torpedering us! Mervy doned id agen!”)

a modern bus like noah's ark with 12 pygmies inside

Tudor Hart's WWI tank camouflage

Above A couple of years ago, we blogged about the World War I camouflage innovations of a Canadian artist named Percyval Tudor Hart (1873-1954). It was a detailed, fairly lengthy blog, and may merit being revisited here. He proposed a style of camouflage in whch he covered the surfaces of a ship, tank and sniper's cloves with multi-colored, high-density zigzags. I actually saw the camouflaged gloves many years ago in an exhibition in Ontario. Above is an AI-colorized photograph of his tank camouflage proposal.

•••

Ilya Ehrenburg, People and Life: memoirs of 1891-1917. London: MacGibbon and Kee, 1961, p. 184—

Here is how in 1916, I described the first tank I had seen: “There is about it something majestic and nauseating. It may be that once there existed a breed of gigantic insects; the tank is like them. It has been brightly decorated for camouflage; the flanks resemble the paintings of the Futurists. It creeps along slowly, like a caterpillar; trenches, bushes, barbed wire, nothing can stop it. Its feelers twitch: they are guns and machine guns. In it, the archaic is combined with the ultra-American, Noah’s Ark with a twenty-first century bus. Inside there are men, twelve pygmies, who innocently believe that they are the tank’s masters.”

she was not only good in math, science & philosophy

Frida Kahlo

Barbara Mujica, Frida: A Novel. Woodstock: Overlook Press, 2001, pp. 102-103—

“Everyone said I had an eye for color,” she told me, very impressed with herself. “Only that stupid Lorenzo, you know what he said? He said I should become a dress designer!” Obviously, she thought dress designing was beneath her, although as an adult she actually wore a lot of her own creations. I can understand how someone might have thought that Frida would become a dress designer. She was so particular about her clothes—the jewelry, the colors, the ribbons in her hair. Everything had to match. Clever Frida. I have to admit it; she was good not only in math and science and philosophy, but she knew how to doll herself up in order to camouflage her defects. I mean, Frida wasn’t really pretty—I told you that before—but she was very particular about her appearance. She took hours to get dressed and do her hair. It was important to her to divert people’s eyes from that ugly, deformed leg. More>>>

amazing how war finds use for anything—even artists

Gerard Woodward, Vanishing. London: Picador, 2014, p. 466—

Shortly after this, back at the barracks, I was called in to see the major. He said the following: "I've had a request for your transfer, Private Brill. It seems someone somewhere in the higher echelons of command thinks you might have a use. The army is forming a Camouflage Corps, and they have specifically asked for you to be part of it. How does it feel to be loved, eh? Well, I suppose they're looking for anyone with artistic credentials. You used to be an art teacher, didn't you? Amazing, isn't it, how war finds use for anything, even artists? Here's your travel warrant. You'll be leaving tomorrow."

landscape camouflage as flat pattern abstract design

Above Collier’s: The National Weekly. January 10, 1914. Artist unknown. This cover design and illustration do not pertain directly to Louis B. Siegriest or military camouflage. But the jacket the person is wearing, with its “flat pattern” abstract design, seems entirely consistent.

•••

Louis Siegriest in Louis Bassi Siegriest Reminiscences: Oral History Transcript. Interview conducted by V.L. Gilb. California: Bancroft Library, 1954—

 [At the time that the US entered World War II in 1941]…I knew a man [in San Francisco] who had been in the First World War as a camoufleur. He called me up and asked me if I would like to come down and join the camouflage outfit. So I thought that would be a thing I would want to do, and I went down and joined the camouflage outfit.

…This was with the US Engineers [Army Corps of Engineers]. That was I think the third day after the war [was declared]…

…they were looking for camoufleurs at that time, and they were very hard to get because very few people had experience, which I myself didn’t have, but this man, he was in the First World War [in France], and he was with [Homer] St. Gaudens and Abe Rattner, the painter.

…So he sort of took charge of the training of the men to be camoufleurs because the men who were head[ing] the department knew nothing of it. They had to read all this time while this fellow took over and trained us to do this type of work.

…His name was Stanley Long [1892-1972]. He is an artist, himself. He has a show at the present time [1954] at the Maxwell Gallery of cowboys and horses. He’s pretty good at it, too, Western type of painting…

…I stayed with them [the camouflage unit] until practically the end of the war…

[Question: How did your work at a WWII camoufleur contribute to your eventual work as an abstract painter?]

…Well, all this time we were working on the drawings of camouflage installations, [and] it had to be worked out in flat pattern. And they all worked into sort of abstract patterns, and that sort of interested me because I had never worked that way. But I had a feeling all the time that that was something I would like to do. So it sort of changed my painting, after working in this camouflage work. I saw things with a different view than I had before. And I still don’t paint as an abstract [artist], but I use an abstract pattern as a base in practically everything I do. I mean I start that way, in more or less flat pattern. And then I work my realistic [components] into the pattern. I found that it works out better than the way I used to work, just straight painting and trying to pull it all together. This way I start out with a pattern, and I worked into it that way.

•••

In a later interview, conducted in 1978 for the Archives of American Art by Terry St. John and Paul Karlstrom, Siegriest gave a slightly different account of the same experiences:

Question: …Some time in 1941 you went to work for the United States Army Corps of Engineers. What did you do for them?



 LS: I went into camouflage at that time. There was that cowboy artist by the name of Danny Long [sic, Stanley Long], whom I knew.  He was a friend of [Maurice] Logan’s. I met him over in San Francisco on the second day of the war, I think. He said they had just called him back. He did camouflage during the First World War, and he said they called him back to teach the younger fellows camouflage. He said, “Why don’t you join up?” I said I would love to. It took me a couple of days to go through the process, but I finally went in and it was easy for me. You were assigned to a job and you made these designs and then they were handed out to different companies to do the work.

Q: Now you did a design like a flat abstract pattern. Would it be an aerial view?



LS: An aerial view.  

Q: And then your design would be sent out to...

LS: Different companies. They would do the painting, nets or whatever. 

Q: What was it like over at Fort Cronkite and around there? Didn’t they use different colored plants and things like that to create patterns?

LS: Yes, but I did the Benicia thing up there, Benicia arsenals. That was designed mostly in there and I wouldn’t have a great deal to do. I’d look at how it looked and then I would fly it. 

Q: They’d put you in an airplane?



LS: Yes, I’d go to Hamilton Field, get a plane and go up there. At 6,000 feet I’d look at it. 

Q: How did it look?



LS: It was okay, sometimes I’d change the design.

Q: What did it look like at 10,000 feet?

LS: It looked like an abstract design. The way I did it was to go up there first and see what the land looked like on the outside. Then I’d bring the land in to the buildings; if there was a green patch over there I’d bring the green patch into the buildings. If there was brown, or dark, I’d bring it all in. So I’d go up and look down and see if that was right. And then there were other ways of doing it. I went up to Klamath, which was a radar station, and bought an old barn and moved it down (the barn) over the top of the radar station. We were on the coast.

Q: How did it look?

LS: Oh, it looked like a ranch, I’d build fences all around.  

Q: What was your experience as an artist?… Did this turn you on to any ideas for your later paintings?



LS: Well, more or less, I guess it did. At that time I painted. I even took my paints along.

Q: What kind of paintings did you do?

LS: I’d do things along the coast, you know.

Q: More straightforward kind of landscapes?

LS: More straightforward landscapes.

Q: Previously when you were doing landscapes you were looking straight ahead at them, and that’s a very abstract way of looking at landscape, like looking down.

LS: I even painted some of the installations.  I got into a lot of trouble by doing it because the Army thought I was giving secrets away. They took all the paintings from me and locked them up. I got them back. Well, that was good, working for the camouflage. And then, during that time, Life and Time had war artists.…

Postscript It may also be of interest that Louis Siegriest's second wife, artist Edna Stoddart (1888-1966), née Edna Lehnhardt, was the niece of Josephine Earp, the common-law wife of Wyatt Earp.

Ding Cong / camouflaged wit and humor from china

Above is his illustration of the following traditional story, as told by Chinese artist Ding Cong (who signed his work as Xiao Ding) (1916-2009).

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Ding Cong, Wit and Humor from Ancient China: One Hundred Cartoons. China Books and Periodicals, 1986—

92. Camouflage with Leaves—

A poor man from the state of Chu once read the following in a book: “A mantis camouflaged itself while waiting to pounce on a cicada.” The man then gathered some leaves under a tree and used them to camouflage himself. When he asked his wife if she could identify him she spoke truthfully and said, “Yes, I can.” The man then changed his posture and asked her several more times. Becoming annoyed by this practice, she finally told him that she was unable to identify him. The man was very glad.

Thus camouflaged with leaves the man went to the market and stole things from the open stalls. But he was caught and summoned to the magistrate’s court. After the man confessed, the magistrate burst into laughter and set him free. He found the man’s conduct so inane that he decided not to punish him.

WWII charming camouflage fashions for mothers to be

Margaret Brentnall, John Hutton, Artist and Glass Engraver. Philadelphia PA: Art Alliance Press, 1986, pp. 40 and 45—

The [World War II British] camouflage soldiers were, on the whole, the most unwarlike collection of men imaginable—painters, sculptors, designers, and architects. They had, in fact, been drawn from the very section of the community that, in warfare, the regular soldier regarded as a bit of a joke.…

An example of the regular army’s attitude in dealing with the camouflage men…was described by Geoffrey Barkas in an article written in 1952 for the Royal Army Ordnance Corps Gazette. Barkas, as chief camouflage officer, Middle East Forces, had been informed that an expeditionary force was being assembled under the code name Lustre Force and that he was to be responsible for its camouflage equipment. He asked where Lustre Force was going, but for reasons of security such information could on no account be divulged. Could he have some clue on suitable tones and colors—was it a yellow, brown, or green country, lumpy or flat, with trees or none? Certainly not. That would be telling him where Lustre Force was going. What was the size and composition of the force, and how long did he have to assemble the material? But this was expecting the planners to reveal the date of embarkation! Barkas did, eventually, make an accurate guess (the destination was Greece) and by direct approach to the director of Ordnance Services he got the support he needed. Although only a few weeks remained for assembling the camouflage supplies, Lustre Force was equipped.

disruptive geezer theatre doors / wartime propaganda

Above This photograph was published in an American theatre magazine during World War I. It shows the decorated entrance of a Broadway theatre in which disruptive abstract patterns (not unlike the confusing dazzle camouflage being applied at the time to merchant ships) have been used to contradict the building's physical form. 

It was common at the time for "scenic artists" (theatre and film set designers) to be assigned to wartime camouflage. 

The treatment of this entrance was a way of promoting the screening of a 1918 short propaganda film titled The Geezer of Berlin, which was of course in reference to the German Kaiser, aka the Beast of Berlin, and the Clown Prince (in reference to his son). Disruptive patterns such as these not only cause visual confusion; they can also disturb the emotions, and, to some extent, designs like this anticipate the use of skewed perspective and shape deformation in avant-garde "expressionist" films, such as The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. In a recent video, titled Ames and Anamorphosis, I have talked about the use of distorted perspective in that and other early films.