Everett L. Warner / throws off U-boat marksmanship

Above Newly found photograph (restored, colorized) of American Impressionist artist and ship camouflage designer Everett Longley Warner (1877-1963), as published in the Boston Herald, October 26, 1902.

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Washington Evening Star (Washington DC), March 17, 1918, p. 28—

Everett L. Warner of this city and New York has lately received a commission as a first lieutenant, senior grade, in the Navy, on account of and for the continuation of his work in what is known as “marine camouflage.”

The particular branch of work that Lieutenant Warner has been conducting is, in point of fact, not camouflage along the lines understood by this term at present, but is, rather, what is known under the general name of “dazzle system.” Upon careful observation it has been found that there is no such thing as camouflage for ships, there being no single color which will make them invisible under all circumstances. The “dazzle system,” which distorts a boat’s shape and prevents accurate marksmanship on the part of the enemy, has, however, proved not only helpful, but a real protection. And it is this that is being followed out scientifically under the charge of Lieutenant Warner and other artists with the co-operation and approval of the United States Shipping Board and the Navy Department.

The theory was developed primarily and largely in England, and three-fourths of the mail streamers between the United States and England now make use of it.

This is an interesting use to make of art and one which has proved its value. It goes to show, moreover, that the artist can be practical as well as artistic and has his place in warfare as well as in days of peace.

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Below Personnel group photograph of Design Subsection of US Navy Camouflage Section (Washington DC), c1918. In command of the larger unit was Harold Van Buskirk (an architect and fencing expert in civilian life), in front row second from the left. Warner, who was head of the Design Subsection is standing at the far right. In the back row, just right of center, wearing a civilian dress hat, is Frederick Judd Waugh, who Warner regarded as the finest of the US ship camoufleurs.

a gruesome green with splodges of pulsating purple

Cubist Wife puzzle

Above Beginning in 1913, when Cubism, Futurism and Vorticism (styles of so-called Modern Art) were introduced to the American public by the famous Armory Show, and continuing through World War I, it was common for cartoon puzzles like this to appear in American newspapers. 

The title of this one is A Cubist Wife. Initially, it was published as a puzzling arrangement of lines (with the black shapes not filled in). Provided with the title, readers were challenged to blacken shapes in such a way as to create a portrait of a "cubist wife." The result (as shown here) was then published in the newspaper a week later. There were endless variations on this (Cubist roosters, cows, donkeys and so on). Vorticism (sardonically discussed below) was essentially a wartime British variant of Cubism. Throughout the war, it was widely claimed that camouflage (particularly dazzle ship camouflage) had been designed by Cubists, Vorticists or others who had been excessively drinking.

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CUBIST PHOTOGRAPHY, signed "The Walrus" in Punch (Melbourne), April 19, 1917, p. 3—

I have done my best to get a grip of the Cubist idea, but my success has been indifferent. I once saw a capital photograph of some eggs. It was a straightforward, realistic rendering of their beautiful form, with the dainty lights and shades, and cast shadows and reflected lights. It was not a great creative work, and inspired, perhaps, no loftier an idea than a hankering after omelettes, but the producer of that photograph evidently saw eggs as I see them, and so tickled my vanity. But along comes your cubist, and we find that when he looks at a cream-colored hen's egg—or, perhaps, to escape the assaults of the literary purists, I had better say a hen's cream-colored egg—he (that is, the Cubist) sees a grossly irregular duodecagon, and the color thereof is a gruesome green with splodges of pulsating purple. I do not deny that he does see exactly that. Probably he does. But tho best thing for him to do is not to make a song about it. but to push off sharp for the nearest brain specialist.

If the Vorticist photographer produces an egg—of course, in the pictorial sense only—it will probably resemble a farthing Catherine wheel just expiring on a bent pin; and after a year or two of mental effort he may evolve a poetical tag to attach to it :

A vision of a shattered albumenized yolk.
Of late the inmate of a high-explosive shell.

Indirectly, this appearance of Cubist, and Vorticist, and Post-Impressionist symptoms in photographs proves that photography is Art. The question as to whether it is or not has caused sackfuls of trouble in the past, but this settles it. If photography is not Art, how can it catch horrible diseases that attack Art, and Art only? Another puzzle is solved at the same time. I have often stood in front of exhibited prints and wondered what on earth was the matter either with them or with me; I can see now that they had symptoms of Vorticism, or that they were convalescent after a bad bout of Cubism. It will save much misunderstanding at future exhibitions if those prints from anything of the sort are labeled accordingly.

FALSE COLORS: Art, Design and Modern Camouflage

CAMOUPEDIA: A Compendium of Research in Art, Architecture and Camouflage

SHIP SHAPE: A Dazzle Camouflage Sourcebook

Lowest price / three book bundle with free shipping 

shoe foolery: low visibility or disruptive dazzle style?

Above Artist's signature unreadable, Camouflage Applied to Footwear in Boot and Shoe Recorder (New York), August 17, 1918, p. 24.

hide and seek chaos results in futurist masterpiece

Above Printed advertisement published in Textile World (Albany NY), October 19143

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Reginald John Farrer [English traveler and plant collector], The Void of War: Letters from three fronts. Boston: Houghton Mifflin company, 1918—

…In certain aspects the war [WWI] is nothing but a glorious, gigantic game of hide and seek—camouflage is nothing else. It is not only the art of making things invisible, but also of making them look like something else. Even the art of inconspicuousness is subtle and exciting. What glory it must be to splash your tents and lorries all over with wild waggles of orange and emerald and ochre and umber, in a drunken chaos, until you have produced a perfect futurist masterpiece which one would think would pierce the very vaults of heaven with its yells. However, as pandemonium produces numbness in the ear, so I suppose a Lost-Dogs'-Home-at-Battersea in chromatics does deaden visibility in a dun-colored ensemble.

But disguise is an even higher branch of the art: you go on to make everything look like something else. Hermit crabs and caddis-worms become our masters. Down from the sky peers the microscopic midget of a Boche plane: he sees a tree—but it may be a gun: he sees a gun—but it may be only a tree. And so the game of hide and seek goes on, in a steady acceleration of ingenuity on both sides, till at last the only logical outcome will be to have no camouflage at all. You will simply put out your big guns fair and square in the open, because nobody will ever believe, by that time, that anything really is what it looks like.

As far as the guns go, the war is developing into a colossal fancy dress ball, with immunity for the prize: wolves in sheeps' clothing are nothing to these gentle shepherdesses of the countryside. The more important they are, the more meekly do they shrink from notice under dominos of boughs or sods, or strawberry-netting tagged over with fluffets of green and brown rags. And sometimes they lurk under some undiscoverable knoll in a coppice, and do their barking through a little hole from which you would only expect rabbits, not shells. It must be the most endless joy to go on planning these disguises. One would lie awake at night wondering how to make one's gun look like a dog kennel, or a dog kennel conceal a gun. But, of course, the individual camouflage is even more exciting yet…

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FALSE COLORS: Art, Design and Modern Camouflage

CAMOUPEDIA: A Compendium of Research in Art, Architecture and Camouflage

SHIP SHAPE: A Dazzle Camouflage Sourcebook

Lowest price / three book bundle with free shipping 

the boudoir camouflage strategies of women in 1914

Above Maurice Ketten, "Fashion Fancies" in The Evening World Daily Magazine (New York), February 26, 1914.

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Anon, from Morning Oregonian (Portland OR), July 27, 1918—

GIRLS AND CAMOUFLAGE—It seems that wise officials who are mobilizing America to win this war have "discovered" that girls have a natural aptitude and predilection for camouflage. A fascinating arraignment of the lipstick, eyebrow pencil and sundry bits of boudoir tricks, so-called gifts of camouflage, brings out the startling information that these have made girls wonder students in concealment and deception and all of it is now being turned to good account. The tools of the beauty parlor are now giving way to the paint brush in shops and factories, the camouflage training of the boudoir is being proved of tremendous value wherever women are employed in Government work.

Compressed air used for ship camouflage during WWI

WWI ship camouflage (not related to text below)

SPRINGFIELD MAN DRAWS PLANS FOR SHIP CAMOUFLAGE in Springfield News-Record (Springfield IL), December 18, 1917—

Springfield is the birthplace of an invention that may prove useful in concealing Uncle Sam's ships at sea from raiding U-boats, the inventor says. The invention is a system of pipes to radiate about a ship under the water line, through which compressed air is to continually blow a sheet of water up about the ship, thus permitting submarine officers to see through their periscopes only the camouflage of water.

Joseph Collins. 634 West Calhoun Avenue, who has been working for the last six months on the invention. estimates that It will cost only $10,000 or $12,000 for each ship to be equipped with his camouflage system.

He mailed to the US War Department a detailed description of his plan, he says, but the War Department referred him to the Navy, and now he is awaiting a reply from Secretary Daniels' department in Washington, as to whether the government will accept his offer and use his invention.