disruptive rattlesnake camouflage / to be discontinued

Magazine ad for Vulcabeston (1919)

ZEBRA STRIPES OFF CHOW CARTS: Solid Colors Will Replace Rattlesnake Trimmings to Economize Paint. Stars and Stripes (Paris, France), June 28, 1918, p. 3—

Zebra stripes on chow carts are to be a thing of the past for some time anyway.

The powers-that-be have come to the conclusion that “the effectiveness of this painting is very slight,” and one of the most overworked words in the language is going to have a little rest. You guessed it: Camouflage.

Solid, dull colors are to replace the rattlesnake patterns in future, it is announced, since it has been proven that they melt into the atmosphere pretty nearly as well as do the more motley contraptions, sometimes better.

Furthermore, all requests for camouflage by organizations in a division are henceforth to be shot up to the division engineer, who will put his camouflage officer on the job and see what kind of concealment will be most effective.

Not that the new regulations will put the camouflage corps out of work. It will probably have to work all the harder. The reason for the changes, and the curtailing of gaudiness, may be summed up in just these words: Economize paint.

snake-like sinuous piping / Mark Booth camouflage art

Tgrit © Mark Booth 2016

Recently I ran across the artwork of an Australian artist named Mark Booth. In 2021, he completed the research requirements for a Master of Fine Arts degree at The University of New South Wales. His thesis, titled Sculpture as Artifice: Mimetic Form in the Environment, can be found at his website along with detailed images of related projects.

Among the works you’ll find online is the one reproduced above, a sculpture titled Tigrit (2016). It was made from PVC pipe (commonly used for plumbing) which was covered with a camouflage-patterned vinyl wrap, then mounted on a wall, on a background that consists of a flat version of the same disruption scheme.

In his thesis, Booth refers to this and comparable works as “snake-like sinuous piping.” Many of us—presumably most—have a degree of aversion to snakes, and yet they are also astonishing, in part because their complicated patterns interfere effectively with the challenge of tracking their movements.

When I saw this initially, I thought of online images of a venomous gaboon viper reclining on a forest floor in sub-Saharan Africa. I wouldn’t like to step on that. Or, in the ranks of the nonvenomous, one cannot help but be impressed by the bewildering surface designs on ball pythons (called that because, when threatened, they coil up into a tight ball for protection).

But there are other things that also quickly spring to mind when confrontlng Mark Booth’s sculpture. After all, PVC is plumbing pipe, so it hardly surprising to think of the large intestines or the bowels. At that point scatology raises its head, and who knows where that path might lead.

This work also caught my eye because a few years ago, while making a series of digital montages, I inavertently ended up with Wind Instrument (reproduced below), that was probably inspired by the vagaries of bathroom jokes. Alimentary, my dear Watson.

For a closer look at Mark Booth’s work, visit his Instagram account. There is also online a selection of short, informative videos here.

In the meantime, given that this item originates from Australia, perhaps it would be fitting to mention Tasmania, the famed Australian island state. Here is an newspaper clipping, titled "Artists and Camouflage," as published in the Advocate (Burnie, Tasmania), on July 21, 1937—

“The problem of camouflage in war can only be solved with your help,” said Air Chief Marshall Sir Cyril Newall in addressing the painters at the Royal Academy banquet. “It is notable, however, that it is the academic and orthodox artist who is helping. At first glance we should have expected more help from the unorthodox—the surrealists, super-modernists, post-post-impressionists, post-mortem impressionists, or whatever you call them. These artists appear to me, as a layman, to misrepresent rather than represent the subjects they work upon.” 

Wind Instrument © Roy R. Behrens 2022