Thursday, August 28, 2025

Ezra Pound / on vorticism and WWI ship camouflage

Above John Everett, SS Sardinian (Allan Line) discharging 6-in Shells made in Canada, c1918, as published in Canadian War Records Office, ART & WAR: Canadian War Memorials. London, c1920.

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Ezra Pound, “The Death of Vorticism” in The Little Review, February / March 1919, pp. 45 and 48—

It may be said that after all kinds of naval camouflage without satisfaction the government has at last put a Vorticist lieutenant [Edward Wadsworth] in charge of the biggest port in England [at Liverpool]; that the French aesthetic camouflagists working on theory and at a distance from the sea-bord, are unsatisfactory and that their work has to be corrected.

RELATED LINKS

Dazzle Camouflage: What is it and how did it work?Nature, Art, and Camouflage / Art, Women's Rights, and CamouflageEmbedded Figures, Art, and Camouflage / Art, Gestalt, and Camouflage /  Optical science meets visual artDisruption versus dazzle / Chicanery and conspicuousness /  Under the big top at Sims' circus