an abstracted equivalent of an animal's typical haunts

Roy R. Behrens, Seeing through Camouflage: Abbott Thayer, Background-Picturing and the Use of Cutout Silhouettes, in Leonardo, Vol 51, No 1, pp. 4046, 2018, pp. 41-46—

In collaboration with his son, artist and naturalist Gerald Handerson Thayer, at some point Abbott Handerson Thayer began to espouse a new kind of camouflage called background-picturing. With that concept, he contended that the appearance of animals had evolved toward being well suited for their customary habitat.

As he put it, the patterns on their bodies are "a picture of such background as would be seen through it if it were transparent."

But animals are rarely immobile. They move from one setting to another, and Thayer was not suggesting that an animal's pattern is a literal pictorial image of a single background. That would be counterproductive. Instead, he reasoned, it is an average of a range of typical settings, a generic abstracted equivalent of the appearance(s) of the animal's usual haunts. In Thayer's words, the patterns found on animals are "a sort of compound picture of their normal backgrounds—a picture seemingly made up by the averaging of innumerable landscapes.”…[more]

Chateau Camouflage / unusual tent for US army officer

CHATEAU CAMOUFLAGE: Army Home of Capt. C.J. Dieges Attracts Favorable Comment in The Jewelers' Circular Weekly (January 9, 1918)—

Capt. Charles J. Dieges, of Dieges & Clust, 15 John St., New York, while visiting his many friends last week on a 10 days' furlough, as noted in The Jewelers' Circular, showed the picture of his tent, illustrated herewith, in which he is making his home until he goes "Over There." In the picture [not the one shown in this post] Captain Dieges is shown outside of his regulation United States Officers' tent, which is named the "Chateau Camouflage," in the company of his son, Robert Dieges, who has served with the United States Army for over nine years and now has the rank of second lieutenant. In civil life, Lieut. Robert Dieges is the assistant foreman in the manufacturing plant of Dieges & Clust. During his nine years of service in the army he has proven himself an expert on trenches, dugouts and general mining. Some of his bomb-proof shelters have been 40 feet underground. Lieutenant Dieges has won his promotion through his own hard work.

When Captain Dieges was asked for a few words describing the tent, he said: "When I arrived at Camp Wadsworth, Spartansburg, SC, with the old 22nd Regiment, New York, now the 102nd Engineers USA, we found that all of the units were preparing to make themselves as comfortable as possible. The units were constructing all styles of bungalow shacks. The photograph represents the regulation United States Army Officers' tent. At one time we had a 10-inch snowfall, and at times, especially at night, it has been very cold. As engineers we must use all material found at hand to carry out our work. As a designer of jewelry, I decided to get up something out of the general run. I made a small sketch of the 'camouflage' tent, which was to be my home, and had the young man on the right, who is an architect in civil life, paint the same to represent just what the name designated, 'camouflage.' The front, rear and sides are constructed of rough pine, utilizing the tent for the roof and partly covering the sides. It has been commented upon most favorably as one of the most unique 'comfies' in camp. The inside is furnished with a cot, small table and chair and the army stove with a miniature fireplace. While there are plenty of cracks and openings for fresh air, at the same time it is very comfortable.

Just out / new version of online film on Gertrude Stein

New and improved version of this video talk is now free online at <https://youtu.be/gPD-IIW_1yA>. Share with anyone interested in Modernism, Iowa, American expatriates, the Lost Generation, literature, Gertrude Stein, Picasso, World War I, Red Cross, Americans in Paris, architecture, painting, Le Corbusier, French Academy, humor, Majorca, Spain, Rome, Independence Iowa—and camouflage.

Twenty years ago I flat-out wouldn't have believed you

One of the benefits of being a graphic designer is that it affords opportunities to provide pro bono solutions for causes that one is in sympathy with. During 45 years of teaching, it was especially gratifying to arrange for students to take on pro bono design community opportunities, in which they could then produce exemplary solutions, to enrich their portfolios. Having retired, I myself don't have a professional need to create designs for community causes, and yet I continue to do it, simply because of the satisfaction of producing things of quality in support of worthy causes.

A couple of years ago, for example, I took on the problem of designing eight large format panels for a traveling exhibition (including a banner and the shipping container) about the life and work of an Iowa-born novelist and short story writer named Ruth Suckow. Through the efforts of Iowa scholar Barbara Lounsberry (President of the Ruth Suckow Memorial Association), the exhibit has had enormous success, resulting in its installation at numerous libraries, history centers and other Iowa venues. It is currently on view at the German American Heritage Museum (Davenport IA), as shown above in a view of the installation space.

More recently, I agreed to design a full-color folded brochure for the Dysart Historical Society in Dysart IA. Screen shots of the unfolded outside and inside page layouts are reproduced below. It is a pleasure to take these on, but of course they are also a source of frustration at times, since one has to comply with the client's intentions for the function of the finished design (its content), while producing a visual solution (its form) that is beautifully and effectively made—not merely "slop" that pays the rent.

As Bob Dylan famously said, "the times they are a-changing." A daunting profusion of ugly tattoos (mindless graffiti on youthful architectural skin) are ruining otherwise beautiful forms—of which the deaths of democracy and the rule of law are easily the most frightening. I thought of that just recently as I once again watched one of the best designed films of our era, No Country for Old Men (2007). Here is the salient passage:

"You know, if you'd have told me 20 years ago I'd see children walking the streets of our Texas towns with green hair and bones in their noses, I just flat-out wouldn't have believed you."

Del Ames, Ballet Mécanique & WWI ship camouflage

online video link

In 2021, I produced a three-part video about the life of Adelbert Ames Jr. (aka Adelbert Ames II), the American artist, psychologist and optical physiologist who became well known (in the 1940s and 50s) for having devised the Ames Demonstrations in perceptual psychology. That trilogy has been available on my YouTube channel (@camoupedia) for the past five years.

Regrettably, I've never been happy with the third video in that series. The voice-over narration was awful. Finally, after years of wanting to replace it, I've now been able to reconstruct that third segment. The new version is greatly improved, and I have posted it online (the link is above), although it has now been retitled as Adelbert Ames and Anamorphosis / New Version / Part 3. It is entirely free to watch and to share with others.

Ames served in the US Army Signal Corps, and was involved in research that pertained to optics and vision. As far as I know, he did not contribute directly to the development of wartime camouflage, but as this video explains, he did have some connection to camouflage, in part because an artist / friend (who designed frames for Ames' paintings) named Hermann Dudley Murphy was an inspector of ship camouflage for the US Shipping Board.

Hermann Dudley Murphy

Another surprising link is this: Murphy's son was Dudley Murphy, a young Hollywood filmmaker, and an expert on lenses and cameras, who (at his father's suggestion) was hired as Ames' technical assistant at Dartmouth College during the summer of 1921. 

The younger Murphy then moved on to Europe. In the UK, he befriended the poet Ezra Pound and the Vorticist photographer Alvin Langdon Colburn. In France, he met the Surrealist artist Man Ray and the French painter Fernand Léger. It was Murphy and Léger (not just Léger, as if often mistakenly claimed) who made the famous experimental film called Ballet Mécanique. 

This video tells the story of that, and ruminates about the link between that film and Ames' later experiments in vision. It's really quite interesting.

Ames distorted room

Picasso, Gestalt, Dazzle Camouflage / Missing Links

Above World War I photograph of German dazzle-painted railway car. Unidentified. Restored, color may not be historically accurate.

•••

Pablo Picasso has been credited with nearly everything, thanks in part to the efforts of his greatest publicist, Gertrude Stein. In her promotional efforts, he was second only to herself. She popularized the resemblance between Cubism and World War I camouflage, which others then embellished, among them French poet André Salmon. Below is a bit from an essay that Salmon wrote in 1929, in which he asserted that Picasso was an "influence" on the dazzle camouflage on ships, as well as disruptive patterning on field service uniforms.

•••

André Salmon, “Letter from Paris” in Apollo: A Journal of the Arts. November 1929. Vol 10 No 59, p. 281—

The torpedo boat? It was Picasso who influenced the torpedo boat. To him is due the naval camouflage used during the war, and I remember a letter that my friend Picasso wrote to me at the front after a massacre of “red trousers,” in which he expressed the desire of seeing us all dressed like harlequins if there were any chance of finding us alive after the victory. It was not his fault that khaki won the day.…

•••

Fritz Heider, a prominent German-American psychologist, wrote about the possible link between Picasso's Cubist paintings and the vision research of Max Wertheimer, a co-founder of Gestalt psychology. Picasso and Wertheimer were contemporaries, born one year apart, and there are lookalike factors in their perception-based experiments. But it does not mean that Picasso invented Gestalt theory or that Wertheimer was a Cubist. I wrote an article on this many years ago (online here) and discussed it in a video talk about Art, Design and Gestalt Theory, also free to watch online.

online here

Stevens and Merilaita book about Animal Camouflage

Publisher's synopsis (cover animation above) for Martin Stevens and Sami Merilaita, eds., Animal Camouflage: Mechanisms and Function. UK: Cambridge University Press, 2011—

In the last decade, research on the previously dormant field of camouflage has advanced rapidly, with numerous studies challenging traditional concepts, investigating previously untested theories and incorporating a greater appreciation of the visual and cognitive systems of the observer. Using studies of both real animals and artificial systems, this book synthesizes the current state of play in camouflage research and understanding. It introduces the different types of camouflage and how they work, including background matching [figure-ground blending], disruptive coloration [dazzle] and obliterative shading [countershading]. It also demonstrates the methodologies used to study them and discusses how camouflage relates to other subjects, particularly with regard to what it can tell us about visual perception. The mixture of primary research and reviews shows students and researchers where the field currently stands and where exciting and important problems remain to be solved, illustrating how the study of camouflage is likely to progress in the future.

•••

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 

WWI mishap / making a cast of the carcass of a horse

WWI magazine illustration

The American artist Charles Burchfield (1893-1967) served briefly as a US Army camoufleur near the end of World War I. In his journals, he recalled a wartime incident that involved an attempt to build a hollowed-out papier maché replica of a dead horse (in which to conceal an observer).

Charles Burchfield, Charles Burchfield's Journals: The Poetry of Place. Albany NY: State University of New York Press, 1993—

It was Capt [William] Yarrow's (the camouflage commander) idea to model a dead horse, which being hollow would be used for a periscope outlet over a dugout, an ingenious idea. Pearson was given the job, as he was a budding sculptor. He thought it would be simpler and more realistic to make a cast from a dead horse itself. Dead horses were not easily procured, and so after a two weeks wait, they had to content themselves with a dead mule secured from a nearby farm. The mule was already two days on the way toward disintegration; nevertheless, Pearson and his helpers, who had requisitioned a truck for the errand, sat on the mule as they went thru the camp, and sang ribald songs, at the tops of their voices, much to the amazement of lookers on.

Pearson's work proceeded slowly, and the odor of the mule grew more frightful with each passing hour (Eskridge & I were sure that Pearson brought it to the barracks with him, and treated him accordingly)—One afternoon, Pearson said—he and his helper Peck, were busily working, when all at once, as one will often do, he realized that for some time someone had been calling him, but it had not completely penetrated his consciousness. Turning he beheld this major (his name eludes me, but he was some rich man's spoiled brat) at some distance, on his horse, gesticulating wildly with one hand, and holding his nose with the other—Pearson hurried over and saluted—

"What the [hell] have you got over there" the major roared—

"A dead mule, sir" was Pearson's reply, with as much sang froid as he could muster—

"A dead mule—You know it's against the regulations to allow a dead animal to lie in the camp—Who gave you permission to bring it here?"

"Capt Yarrow sir?"

"Where the hell is he?"

"I presume over in the woods there, sir" (some of the camouflage work took place in a pine grove near at hand)—

"Well, I'll show him whether he can bring dead mules into the camp," and putting spurs to his horse, he rode furiously off, only, a few minutes later, to plunge thru the artificial [camouflaged] hill, which had been so skillfully constructed that few would know it was not real, unless they had been told. It threw him from his horse, and by the time, with the aid of whatever soldiers were around, he had extricated himself, he was speechless with rage.

•••

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 

camouflaged American soldier emerges from stump

World War I American soldier (digital animation)

Henry Berry (American artist / camoufleur), in Make the Kaiser Dance. New York: Doubleday, 1978, p. 207—

I picked Harry Hull [Howard Hull], the brother of Henry Hull, the actor, as my [US Army camouflage] partner, and we went to work. We decided to put together a fake stump, the kind that you move around and hide just about anything in…First we took some real bark off a tree and wired it to a cage we had. When we actually planted it in an area that had a lot of other stumps—really, you couldn't tell the damn thing from the others. We even had a little trap door on the bottom that you could crawl in or out of.

•••

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 

aimed to distort the lines and to warp the perspective

Above WWII American ship camouflage (unidentified), 1944

•••

Matthew Luckiesh, Visual illusions, their causes, characteristics and applications. New York: Van Nostrand, 1922, pp. 225-227—

Many optical illusions have been devised and studied by scientists. In fact, some of these tricks are well known to the general reader. Straight lines may appear broken, convergent, or divergent by providing certain patterns or lines intermingled with them. [Beginning in World War I] Many of these were applied to models in laboratory experiments and it has been shown that confusion results as to the course of the vessel. The application of these on vessels has resulted in the grotesque patterns to be seen on ships during the latter stage of the war. It is well known that these illusions are most effective when the greatest contrasts are used, hence black and white patterns are common. Color has not been utilized as definitely as pattern in confusibility, although there is a secondary aim of obtaining low visibility at a great distance by properly balancing the black, white, and other colors so that a blue-gray results at distances too great for the individual patterns to be resolved by the eye. Color could be used for the purpose of increasing the conclusion by apparently altering the perspective. For example, blue and red patterns on the same surface do not usually appear at the same distance, the red appearing closer than the blue.

Such apparently grotesque patterns aimed to distort the lines of the ship and to warp the perspective by which the course is estimated. This was the final type of marine camouflage at the close of the war. Besides relying upon these illusions, ships zigzagged on being attacked and aimed in other ways to confuse the enemy. No general attempt was made to disguise the bow, because the bow-wave was generally visible. However, attempts have been made to increase it apparently and even to provide one at the stern. In fact, ingenuity was heavily drawn upon and many expedients were tried.

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 

ship camouflage / as dazzling as Frisco pousse-café

Herman Whitaker, SIMS'S CIRCUS, A Cruise with Our Destroyers Over There in The Independent Vol 94—

Barred, striped, blotched, smudged, ring streaked with vivid pinks, arsenic greens, blowsy reds, violent blues, they looked like—like nothing in the world unless it be that most poisonous of drinks, a Frisco pousse-café. All of the giraffes, zebras, leopards and tigers ever assembled in the "World Greatest Aggregation" exhibit conventional patterns in comparison with this destroyer camouflage.

USS Sequatchie / World War II

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 

Hidden Humor: Camouflage Cartoons

Germans more adept at using WWI camouflage tricks

TRICKS IN ALL TRADES: The War Game Has Its Share of Them, as the Pictures on This Page Bear Witness—The Germans Have Been the More Adept at Their Use, Even to a Replica of the Trojan Horse in The Constitution (Atlanta GA), June 13, 1915.

WWI oil camouflage with views of ship in harbor

USS Lake Pleasant (1918)

Above Two views of the starboard side of the same ship, the USS Lake Pleasant (1918), showing its dazzle camouflage scheme. Not directly pertinent to the news story posted below.

•••

OIL CAMOUFLAGE OF U-BOAT CAPTAINS IS EXPOSED BY ALLIES, Instead of Sailing on, Destroyers Drop Many Depth Charges Near Floating Oil in The Tulsa Weekly Democrat (Tulsa OK) July 25, 1918—

Tricky German U-boat commanders have concelved a new plan destined to deceive crews of the Allled submarine destroyers in the game of hide and seek in European waters. When a depth bomb is discharged and does not cripple or destroy the German under-sea boat, as sometimes happens, a quantity of oil is released by some device of the submersible and quickly rises to the water's surface.

The hope of the German U-boat captain is that the commander of the destroyer will see the oil, believe that the submarine has been wrecked and drop no more depth charges. Meanwhile, the German is endeavoring to escape.

Amerlcan and British commanders of destroyers and submarine chasers discovered the scheme some time ago and since then have been dropping depth bombs in greater number-than previously, using the oil as a guide to the general location of their target.

"Oil camouflage" the Amerlcans and British navymen call this Iatest German submarine trick.

False Colors: Art, Design and Modern Camouflage

British Army Tank Camouflage / WWI Strategic Testing

Above I recently ran across this book by Roger Pugh, titled THE MOST SECRET PLACE ON EARTH: The Story of the East Anglian Village of Elveden and the Birth of the World's First Tanks. Larks Press, 2014. It is an account of the village of Elveden during World War I, during which it secretly functioned as a development and testing site for the British Army's tanks.

I haven't yet seen the actual book, although copies are for sale online. I was initially pulled in by the image on the cover. In a further search, I found a website sponsored by St Edmundsbury, titled The Great War of 1914 to 1918 Picture Gallery of Bury St Edmunds and Surrounds. There is a caption on that site that provides more information about the image on the cover. It reads as follows:

The artist Solomon J Solomon was enlisted to design camouflage for the new weapons. He visited Elveden and also went to France to study the soil and vegetation there. In June 1916 Solomon began painting the first tanks in a mixture of pink, grey, green and brown blotches. This picture shows a modern attempt to reproduce this camouflage, which was soon replaced by a uniform khaki brown once in the field in France.

Those who follow this blog will most likely recognize the name of Solomon J. Solomon, who was the first commander of the British Army's camouflage section, and who wrote one of the earliest books (perhaps the first) on infantry camouflage, titled Strategic Camouflage. He is also featured in a free, online video talk I made several years ago (see link below).

Nature, Art and Camouflage (video)

that artists should be placed in charge of camouflage

False Colors: Art, Design and Modern Camouflage

Captain Aymar Embury II, US Reserve, "Nature's Camouflage and Man's" in The New Country Life. Vol 34 No 2, June 1919, pp. 27-40—

It is fitting that military men should have turned to the artist-naturalists for information on camouflage, and should have placed artists in charge of military camouflage, not the United States alone, but in England and France as well, and I believe also in Germany. In this country the camouflage, both naval and land, is being done largely by artists with the assistance of men of kindred professions, such as the stage and architecture…

•••

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 

•••

Below Drawing by Charles Livington Bull with the following caption: Perhaps the best known of all the camouflage tricks is the dead horse made of papier maché, or even of steel, so arranged that the sniper or lookout can hide in it and keep watch of the enemy.

the unknown role of Iowa artists in modern camouflage

Coming soon: At 2:00 pm on Sunday, August 9, I will be giving a one-hour illustrated talk on camouflage in connection with art, nature, and its military uses in World War I. The talk will take place at the German American Heritage Center & Museum at 712 West 2nd Street in Davenport, Iowa. Insights and surprises abound. Looking forward to it! For more information, see gahc.org.

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 / 

FALSE COLORS: Art, Design and Modern Camouflage

CAMOUPEDIA: A Compendium of Research

on Art, Architecture and Camouflage

SHIP SHAPE: A Dazzle Camouflage Sourcebook

ship camoufleurs George Musaphia / B.R. Campbell

George Musaphia illustrations

I know almost nothing about an American illustrator named George Musaphia. The little that I do know I found in a brief news article in the Spokane Chronicle (October 7, 1918), which reads as follows—

RECORD CLAIMED BY CAMOFLEURS Two Seattle "camofleurs"—the men who paint the zig-zag stripes on ships returned recently from Portland OR, where they spent six days supervising the camouflaging of six vessels being built for the Emergency Fleet Corporation. The total of six ships in six days is believed a camouflaging record.

The two are George Misaphia [sic], formerly a New York portrait painter, and B.R. Campbell, who, in peace times, is a Boston theatrical scenery decorator.

That's it. I've searched for both artists, Musaphia (not Misaphia, unless I'm mistaken) and Campbell, the latter of whom is possibly a New England artist named Brooks R. Campbell (1898-1977), who worked as a sign painter in Manhattan. It seems likely that the other man was George (or Georges) Musaphia (1894-1979), but I could be wrong.

One thing about Musaphia that seems certain is that he was affiliated with the theatre, and that he worked in Boston (in advance of World War I) as an illustrator for theatre reviews. Maybe that's how he met Campbell, who is described as a "Boston theatrical scenery decorator."

The six Musaphia illustrations that I have found so far were all published in 1913. I've scanned and reproduced them here. They are stylistically consistent, but the attribution is also clear because he signed his name in an unusual way, part symbol and part letters. They were published in the Boston American on the following dates (from top to bottom) September 7, October 12 and 19, and November 2, 9 and 30. He probably was a portrait painter because his theatre illustrations are, without fail, essentially portraits of the actors as they appear in costume.

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 / 

FALSE COLORS: Art, Design and Modern Camouflage

CAMOUPEDIA: A Compendium of Research

on Art, Architecture and Camouflage

SHIP SHAPE: A Dazzle Camouflage Sourcebook