how to be a futurist —and the birth of modernist snow

Above A British satirical cartoon about Futurism, published in 1912, one year in advance of the American Armory Show (first US exhibit of Modern Art), and two years before the formation (by the French Army) of a wartime camouflage section. Disruptive camouflage would thereafter be commonly said to have come from Futurism, Cubism and Vorticism.

•••

Anon, THE SNOWSCAPE: Revelation of Modern Art Not Futurism, Cubism or Other Cosmic Urge, but Phase of Nature, reprinted from the New York Herald in St. Joseph News-Press on January 8, 1923—

The great revelation of modern art is not futurism, cubism, vorticism, or any other of the Freudian cosmic urges. Movements of that sort most always belong strictly to the self-elected heirs of an impredicable posterity.

The revelation of modern art is snow. From the brilliant palette of today a new mantle of pleasure has fallen upon the consciousness of cultivated perception lighter and more lovely than the past ever dreamed.

Snow to the Greeks and Romans was merely something cool to put in a beverage. Among the Italian primitives and through the Renaissance snow scarcely existed save on some background mountain top. Here and there a later Dutchman accepted it as a necessary adjunct to a winter genre. But for the most part art excluded it through a convention almost as rigid as that by which the Japanese printmakers ignored shadows.

The Japanese, of course, loved snow and filled their designs with It. But it was never more than spacing or applied white lead. And the snow blindness of Western art persisted far into the last century. Imagine a snow scene by Corot. Some men, perhaps, were attempting it, especially religious painters, who required it to chill their lost sheep, but only in the Christmas card kind of way until Sisley discovered that Paris streets became in winter an opalescent wonder.

And that is precisely the vital modern discovery—that snow is not white. Faint rose, azure, orchid, lavender, primrose, pearl, or any possible combination in the higher keys it may be, but blank white, never! The sky Itself is not more varied or richer in hue or texture. No one who has ever studied a Redfield, for example. or one of the Swedish, can continue to think of the winter landscape as a dull white sheet of other than a prismatic Persian carpet replete with glorious astonishments.

Modern art has excelled in this alone. Snow is probably the only phase of nature that is being painted better and more sympathetically today than ever before. And because the artist is an interpreter who walks only a few feet ahead of his generation thousands upon thousands of us will look from our windows this winter upon a shimmering rainbow tinted world our fathers never knew.

RELATED LINKS 

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

is that a woman shampooing her cornfield?—say what!

Marthe Troly-Curtin, Phrynette's Letter from London, "River Reflections" in THE SKETCH, June 5, 1918, p. 276—

[I am reminded of] a little true yarn which of course is not apropos (oh, not at all!) but which may make you grin. It is a tale of one of yous, a pre-war painter, a famous one of the future. When war broke out he left his velvet coat for khaki, and went off whistling. He got wounded and was sent back home to a wife who objected to his pipe, and would tidy his studio and took unto herself the right to choose his models! He stood it for a little while, after which he tried to get back into the Army. The doctors, however, would not pass him for active service. A friend in authority advised him to apply for camouflage work, and obligingly took a few of his canvases to show the Red-Capped-One who Decideth one of the Futurist masterpieces.

"Humph, call that painting? What is it, anyway?"

"A woman shampooing her hair, Sir."

"Hair, is it? Looks more like a cornfield to me."

"Well, Sir, isn't that camouflage?"

And the Futurist one was fortunate, and is now camouflaging unflaggingly.

RELATED LINKS 

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

Dan Campion / camouflage, surrealism and satiric wit

Dan Campion, The Mirror Test

At a recent book reading, I was fortunate to meet an Iowa City-based writer named Dan Campion. We had an interesting conversation, and he kindly shared a copy of his recent book of poetry, The Mirror Test (MadHat Press, 2024).

As an artist and designer, I was immediately drawn to the cover (shown here, designed by Marc Vincenz, using an image credited to Vincenz, Jake Quart and Sonia Santos), which—like the poetry it illustrates—works by a finely hewn balancing act between clarity and confusion.

Ambiguity at its finest pervades Dan Campion's wonderful poems. I myself, as an addict of clarion vision, as well as its famous subversion in the varieties of camouflage, stopped abruptly in his book at Blaze Orange, a quietly elegant comment about the irony of vision, its enablement, yet also its prevention. Here is the complete text of that poem, reprinted with the permission of its author (copyright © Dan Campion)—

Blaze orange, the opposite of camouflage,

creates a bold, conspicuous mirage

of safety, as if iridescence could

not stain with hemoglobin red nor would

it disappear completely under snow

that rushes down with vicious undertow

nor fail to stop or slow a motorist

who'll flat refuse the breathalyzer test.

We bought my blaze orange T-shirt late one year

to spare me being taken for a deer

while walking through the woods. It's comical.

But even so, at least once every fall

I pull it from the bottom of the drawer

and put it on and venture out, secure.


Only recently, maybe ten days before I met Dan Campion, I had given a talk for a conservation group, about animal camouflage, in which one of the slides I showed was that of blaze orange hunter's garb. As for Dan Campion himself, I didn't recognize the name. Only later did I realize that in fact he was the author of a book I so enjoyed, years ago, about the humorous writings of Peter De Vries (1910-1993), titled Peter De Vries and Surrealism, a must read.

RELATED LINKS 

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

whyah duck decoy, whyah no chicken hunting cartoon

Above This is the cover of the October 20, 1909, issue of Puck, an American humor magazine that was founded in 1875 and continued until 1918. This cartoon was published about five years prior to the official adoption (by the French Army) of the practice of wartime camouflage. So although it doesn't use the word, it is nevertheless a portrayal of camouflage, such as the employment of decoys.

In the cartoon, two hunters armed with shotguns (labeled on their clothing as "Political Boss" and "Public Service Corporation") are concealed in the reeds on the edge of a lake, waiting for birds overhead to alight. On the water in front of them are various bird decoys, labeled "Respectable Candidates," with which they hope to lure the flocks of birds (labeled "Votes") to land. The text below the cartoon reads "They know the kinds of decoys to use."

Also see Abbott H. Thayer's Vanishing Ducks: Surveillance, Art and Camouflage.

RELATED LINKS 

Nature, Art, and Camouflage / Art, Women's Rights, and Camouflage /  Embedded Figures, Art, and Camouflage / Art, Gestalt, and Camouflage /  Optical science meets visual art /  Disruption versus dazzle / Chicanery and conspicuousness /  Under the big top at Sims' circus

a fascinating visit to the home of Aldo Leopold in Iowa

Leopold home in Burlington IA

For ten years I lived in Wisconsin. It was during that time that I became aware of the writings of the American conservationist Aldo Leopold, who was for years on the faculty at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. I have always thought of him in connection to Wisconsin, no doubt in part because of his famous book, A Sand County Almanac (1949). 

It was only in recent years that I realized that he was born and raised in Iowa. His family's tandem Victorian homes in Burlington are beautifully maintained by the Leopold Landscape Alliance, which works to promote his ideas.

Mary and I were in Burlington because I was invited to speak about animal camouflage. The talk went well, and was more than a little enriched by stories and observations from an alert and lively audience. We were especially pleased to meet Steve and Kathy Brower, who have been instrumental in sharing Leopold's beliefs about ecology, wildlife conservation, and environmental ethics. Their work is reassuring at a time when so many good efforts are threatened.

Among the various efforts initiated by the Leopold Landscape Legacy is a PowerPoint program called Aldo Leopold and the Roots of the Land Ethic, which is available for classes and conservation groups. But they also offer a program (funded by the Kenneth J. Branch Memorial College Fund) in which free resident field trips are available to classes ("all types of classes are welcome"), including such components as tours of the houses and grounds, field trips of Leopold's favorite nature locations, a screening of the award-winning film Greenfire, book discussions, and so on. 

Anyone interested in learning more about these educational opportunities should contact Steve Brower at the Leopold Landscape Alliance at brower406[at]aol[dot]com. It all sounds fascinating. I don't doubt for a minute that your experience will be as pleasurable as ours.

RELATED LINKS 

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