deformed ships like papier-maché caves of polar bears

Until recently I had no idea that the architect Le Corbusier had ever mentioned camouflage in his published writings, albeit he was interested in various aspects of Cubism. But I have now run across an excerpt from the book that he and the artist Ozenfant wrote in 1918, called Apres le cubism, in which they talk about camouflaged ships. 

Above is a public domain photograph of him by an unknown photographer, titled Le Corbusier at Shodhan House in India, 1955. I also used it recently on the opening page of an essay titled "Occupant of a House by Le Corbusier" in my recent book of essays, Dreams of Fields: Memory Traces of Iowa's Past (Ice Cube Press, 2025).

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Amédée Ozenfant and Charles-Edouard Jeanneret [birthname of Le Corbusier], Apres le cubism. Paris: Edition des Commentaires, 1918, p. 30.

…There is an organic beauty in the structure of a transatlantic ship; we are indifferent to it; but here comes the war, suddenly bringing us camouflaged ships, which instantly become the unexpected theme of the "renewal of the subject" and "originality of vision"! Poor magnificent ships, with wonderfully balanced structures, with vast architecture, gleaming and pristine under their pure varnish, they are admired because of their camouflage, deformed, hilarious, collapsed in the surrounding landscape, unrecognizable, resembling the papier-mâché cave of the polar bears at Hagenbeck, like stage sets for shooting galleries; we find ourselves in Parade; from there we draw easy entertainment, easy decor, easy arabesques, everything that cancels beauty!

The novelty of the subjects does not renew painting; there is only a known variation on a new theme, something to distinguish oneself through the apparent oddity of the subject.

This is not progress; it is only a modality of naturalism or impressionism, under cubist camouflage.

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swimmingly attired / a dazzling disguise at the beach

Above Dazzle-patterned beach attire, which became a fashion craze near the end of World War I. Digital coloring.

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News item in the San Francisco Examiner, October 8, 1917—

"Camouflage" was the subject of the Rev. Robert N. Powers in the Parkside Presbyterian Church Sunday evening. He said, in part:

War has lost its glory and chivalry and has gone back to the tactics of Bushmen and Indians. The artists of Europe have been called away from the great masters and the realms of ideal beauty to paint in disguising colors, ships, flying-machines, roads, horses and cannon.

There is a moral camouflage also. Business is streaked with it; politics is painted thick with it and society is too often camouflage itself. All our tricks of excusing and deceiving, of posing and pretending are a species of camouflage that in the long run deceives no one but ourselves.

jackies removing ship camouflage paint / documented

painting over camouflage at war's end

It is not easy to find historic photographs of ships in the process of having their camouflage applied. They do exist and I have found about ten. But an even greater challenge is to find photographs of ships (at the end of the war) having their wartime camouflage painted over. There cannot be many photographs of that, since it was a far less dramatic event than the application of camouflage. 

Earlier today, when I first put up this blog post, I illustrated it with a newspaper photograph from 1919. But it was of such poor quality that I decided to take it down, and am now replacing it with the above photograph, which shows the overpainting of a ship's camouflage at the end of WWI. I regret that I have not located the source. 

As for the earlier deleted photograph, it was an illustration for a brief article in The Reno Gazette Journal (Reno NV) on April 16, 1919. The headline for that article was TAKING OFF THE WAR PAINT, and the accompanying text was as follows—

When Kaiser Bill told us we should stripe our ships like a barber pole and sail them where he ordered, we said we wouldn't. We put on our war paint instead and jumped into the fight. It's over, and here are the jackies [sailors] removing the camouflage and putting the steel grey and white of peace on the sides of a battle cruiser.

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preparing models for testing WWI dazzle camouflage

This is such an interesting photograph. The caption reads "Making models for testing World War I ship camouflage." The original is dated on the back as February 10, 1919, but that's absurd. It must have been made in 1918 (or even late 1917). Nor is the location a certainty. None of these people appear in other photographs of the staff members of the US Navy's Washington DC camouflage lab, nor is this the same room as in those photographs. It's also puzzling that one of them is a woman, most likely a civilian (all three appear to be in civilian clothing). 

They are making ship models out of wood, using woodworking tools, such as the jigsaw on the left. In the center in the very back is a shelving unit on which finished, painted models are stored, and on the far right there is a suspended chart that shows various ship designs. Clearly evident also are the water sprinkler system pipes, which reminds us of a newspaper item from early 1918, reporting that the ship camouflage workshop had been damaged by fire. Based on a public domain government photograph at the Naval History and Heritage Command NH 41721 / digital coloring.

A grayscale print of this photograph was featured in an exhibition at the Hearst Center for the Arts (Cedar Falls IA) in 2018, for which the caption read—

During World War I, the process of designing ship camouflage began with the construction of unpainted wooden ship models, built to scale. These were then given to artist/designers, who devised different camouflage schemes for each of the two sides of the models, in preparation for testing them in a periscope-equipped observation theatre.

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