was utter nonsense / camouflage as painting things up

Bus for wounded soldiers at WWI fundraising rally [colorized]

Peter Rodyenko, “Camouflage: Modern aerial photography outmodes paint, results in introduction of new techniques” in Life magazine (January 13, 1941), p. 39—

To most people, the art of camouflage means "painting things up." They are, of course, very wrong. In general, they get this impression from seeing pictures of guns and tanks "camouflaged" with crisscross and zigzag designs. In their newspapers they read of snipers who wear strange-colored costumes to "confuse" the enemy. They hear and believe stories about industrial buildings which have been so decorated with dazzle paint that they are invisible from the air. What they do not realize is that most of such stuff is utter nonsense.

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

painting camouflage on trucks—then washing it off

WWI camouflaged ammunition truck (colorized)

Eugene Wokal, quoted in Ronald Naversen, The Scenographer as Camoufleur. Dissertation. Carbondale IL: Southern Illinois University, 1989, p. 47—

I became friends with Major Peter Rodyenko [who taught camouflage at Pratt Institute]…I traveled down there [to Fort Belvoir] to look around and decided I wanted to work on camouflage. We trained by painting trucks and washed off the paint at night so we could do it again tomorrow.

See also

Rodyenko, Peter (1936) “On Camouflage Training” in The Reserve Officer Vol 13 No 9 (September), pp. 5-7.
___(1941) “Camouflage: Modern aerial photography outmodes paint, results in introduction of new techniques” in Life magazine (January 13), pp. 39-42.

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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 /  

Hidden Humor / World War One camouflage cartoons

I have just premiered a new 14-minute documentary video talk, titled HIDDEN HUMOR: World War One Cartoonists' Views of Camouflage. It is free to view (and to share with others) on YouTube at <https://youtu.be/V6silNdlL3l>. It is not only about wartime camouflage but revisits the surprising (and often amusing) connections between art, fashion design, women's rights, bootlegging, and ship camouflage—as became a favorite focus of newspaper cartoons and comics before and after WWI.

•••

G. Stanley Hall (1920)—

Humor is perhaps the best camouflage for fear. In looking over the files of the trench journals of the Allies nothing has struck me more forcibly than the desperate and pathetic attempts to jest, even about death itself in its more horrid aspects.

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).

•••

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.

more info

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.

•••

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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this weekend / public slide presentation on camouflage

On Sunday April 26 at 2 pm, I will be speaking at the English Valleys History Center at 108 North Main in North English IA. It's free and open to the public. IOWA'S CAMOUFLAGE EXPERTS is a 60-minute slide talk about Iowa artists, designers, scientist and others who served as camouflage advisors during both world wars, especially during WWI. An informal, fast-paced presentation, enriched by scores of rare historic photographs and other image artifacts. Shown here are three of the slides from the program.

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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 /  

like a circus / weird triangles and lines over the hulls

Above Cover illustration by C. McKnight Smith for Scientific American, October 26, 1918.

•••

Robert H. Ferrell, Woodrow Wilson and World War I, 1917-1921. New York: Harper and Row, 1985, p. 35—

Having [to] resort to lookouts only when searching for victims, the U-boats [German submarines] enjoyed the advantage of a thin silhouette. Moreover, the U-boat lookout could see the masts of a steamer as far as fifteen miles whereas the steamer’s lookout could discern the sub only at four. The Allies camouflaged their ships by painting weird triangles and lines over the hulls, lending a circus aspect to every harbor.

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 /  

a timeline of developments in camouflage research

Above Opening page of Roy R. Behrens, A Camouflage Timeline 1858-2009. This 16-page chronology has now been posted as a downloadable pdf at Academia [dot] edu. Here's the link. It was produced in 2009 as an exhibition component. Fifteen years have passed; it needs extensive updating.

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 /  

Grant Wood's camouflage service during World War I

WWI French artillery camouflage

It is by now common knowledge that when Iowa artist Grant Wood served in the US Army during World War I, he was assigned to field camouflage. When someone contacted me recently to ask what I might know about that, I replied that the best source might be Darrell Garwood's biography titled Artist in Iowa: A Life of Grant Wood (New York: Norton, 1944). Wood's involvement in camouflage is mentioned in other biographies as well, but they tend to be brief and less than strictly factual.

Here's what Garwood's biography says—

Since his [Wood's] mother and sister were dependent on him, he had been placed in Class 3C in the draft and was passed over in the first draft call in September. Later, other family arrangements were made for the very little money Mrs. Wood needed to keep house, and Grant enlisted as a private in the army. He was sent to Camp Dodge, outside Des Moines, where he spent a good part of his training period making pencil portraits of his comrades and officers. He charged privates twenty-five cents and officers one dollar for the portraits—at least these were his prices when anyone offered to pay him. He didn't ask for payment, and the officer didn't think to offer it, when he made a portrait of his company commander, Captain George E. Proud.

Captain Proud was getting ready to go into town when a sergeant came in to say there was a man outside who wanted to make a sketch of him. The captain was in a hurry, but told the sergeant to bring him in. It didn't take Grant more than ten or fifteen minutes to make the sketch. Proud scarcely looked at it at the time, and afterward didn't remember Grant's name; he only remembered that Grant had said he was a mural painter. When he was back practicing law at Arapahoe, Nebraska, however, Proud found the sketch among his things, liked it and had it framed. It hung on his office wall for fifteen years before someone happened to notice it was a Grant Wood portrait.

Grant's stay at Camp Dodge promised to be pleasant. He was excused from the more onerous military duties, given a sidecar motorcycle, and told to go about making historic records. Then he contracted anthrax, and nearly died. When he recovered, he was sent to Washington to do camouflage work. He served as a private in Company B, Regiment 97, United States Engineers, and was in charge of the paint tent. He made clay models of field gun positions and helped camouflage artillery pieces. Before-and-after photographs of a cannon he helped camouflage were on display for several years at the Smithsonian Institution.

He was still in Washington when the war ended, and was transferred back to Camp Dodge. He arrived home on Christmas Eve, 1918.…

Like Norman Rockwell and other artists who served in the military, Wood was often asked (or offered) to make portraits of his fellow soldiers, including officers. The Nebraska attorney who was Wood's company commander was George C. Proud, not George E. Proud. Other artists in the infantry (Walt Disney being one) were able to earn extra money by painting camouflage or other designs on the helmets of other soldiers.

It’s interesting that in Wood’s WWI draft registration, he lists himself as a "contractor and builder” not as an artist. After regaining his health at Camp Dodge, he was presumably transferred to Camp American University in Washington DC, where, as Garwood notes, he camouflaged artillery (field guns or cannon).

A different Wood biography claims that he painted the artillery for the purposes of making it "blend in" with its surroundings. But that may be misleading, since by 1918 it was common practice to camouflage nearly anything not by blending but by applying “disruptive” (high difference) patterns. The goal was less to blend in than to break apart the shape, making it harder to see as a “thing.”  

Some of these guns were genuine functioning cannon, while others may have been non-firing dummies, made of logs and wagon wheels (known as Quaker guns), that looked like cannon from the air, and were used to divert enemy fire. These might also be camouflaged, to make them more convincing. By that time in the war, when field guns were manufactured in the US, the disruptive camouflage patterns (all the same) were automatically applied at the factory during production, so it is somewhat surprising that the patterns would have to be painted.

WWI camouflage applied during production process

The war ended before Wood was sent overseas. He was never stationed in Europe. Two artists who served with him as camoufleurs were Orrin White and Charles P. Killgore, with whom (long after the war) he later exhibited artwork at Younkers in Des Moines. See details here.

It seems to me that all of this misses the point somewhat of Wood's connection to camouflage. The most important convergence is that camouflage relies on the same "grouping principles" that artists and designers use. I've explained all this in an online video talk.

•••

Anon, in ART CIRCLES, in Long Beach Independent (Long Beach CA), March 27, 1949, p. 10—

[A retired oil-field worker turned artist Carl R. Walline’s] interest in painting dates back to the first world war, when he drummed up a lively business on a returning troop ship painting camouflage on the helmets of soldiers at a dollar a helmet.

With this leftover camouflage paint he did his first landscape.

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 /  

Shoeless Joe Jackson was a ship camouflage painter

Shoeless Joe

JACKSON DOING BIT BY PAINTING SHIPS: FORMER WHITE SOX OUTFIELDER OBTAINS POSITION IN SHIPYARD: Not Only Man in Baseball Who Discovers He Could Better Be Employed Elsewhere Than on the Firing Line in The Postville Review (Postville IA) no date, 1918—

Joe Jackson, until recently of the White Sox ball team, besides possessing extraordinary athletic talents, is a man of unusual physical development. Presumably he would make an excellent fighting man. But it appears that Mr. Jackson would prefer not to fight.

The facts seem to be that Jackson was about to be drafted into the army, whereupon be obtained a position in an eastern shipyard. He is said to be doing his part to beat the Huns by painting ships. Whether this work is camouflage—we refer to the methods of painting—has not been announced.

Jackson is not the only man in professional baseball who has discovered special gifts that apparently could be employed to special advantage elsewhere outside the firing line. It is to be hoped that the American public will keep these men in mind. We need shipbuilders to win the war, but when a man on the eve of being drafted into the army suddenly finds that he can best serve the nation by painting ships, good Americans will not be very enthusiastic over seeing him play baseball after the war is over. The special gifts that disqualify him for the army will likewise disqualify him for special popularity in the great American game.

A word of praise should be said for those ball players who have entered the military forces. They will undoubtedly make a good record, and it is these men in particular that we shall want to see back on the diamond.

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 /  

oddly festooned cubist quilts / dazzling pictorial archive

THE BRADFORD ERA (Bradford PA), April 5, 1918, p. 2—

The stanchest upholders of the academic in art can scarcely carry their opposition to cubism into its new field as a basis for ship camouflage. It has been evident, for some time, to people living near Atlantic ports, that cubism had been pitched upon as the most valuable system of reducing the visibility of ocean liners. The seemingly systemless way in which greens, blues, grays, and pinks are painted on in bands and blocks of color has quite puzzled persons who have gained close views of these ships; but at a distance of a mile, another story is told, for the various masses of color set up a curious and disconcerting dazzling effect. Painting with gray has been largely superseded by the new method, which escapes the silhouette effect that too often betrayed the gray ships.

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 /  

a cubist romance / 'mong the cubes i'd love to ramble

Above Cubism predated WWI French Army camouflage, more or less. This still image is from Rigadin painter cubist [Rigadin the Cubist Painter] a film by Georges Monca (1912), Pathé. See online detail. 

•••

All Aboard, a musical comedy that opened June 5, 1913 at Lew Fields' 44th Street Roof Garden in New York, as reviewed in The Sun, July 27, 1913, p. 12—

It is Ralph Riggs and his wife Katherine Witchie, who do the Cubist dance. The scene is in a studio of a Cubist and a Futurist painter and the lyrics of the song are as follows:

Said the Futurist boy to the Cubist girl

As they met on a poster blue:

"I don't know who the dickens I am—

and who in the deuce are you?"

Said the Cubist girl to the Futurist boy:

"We both were born, I think,

On a dark and dismal night last week

When the cat tipped over the ink."

Said the girl, "You must agree

We're awful sights to see."

Said the boy, "You seem to be

The girl that's made for me."

CHORUS

Oh, you Cubist girl, in cubes that curl

You little, wiggy-waggy, riggy-raggy,

ziggy-zaggy maid—

Picture puzzle queen,

From what I've seen

I think my style will suit you.

In the future when I'm painted

in every shade, like a crazy quilt,

although you're built,

to find you in the scramble

'Mong the cubes I'd love to ramble

A while some future day you'll be

My jumble ju-ju bee

My riggy-raggy,

Ziggy-zaggy,

Cubist girl.

free and open to the public / art and camouflage talk

Coming soon. Save the date.

in the process of applying ship camouflage during WWI

Above There are few photographs of World War I ship camouflage (maybe a dozen or fewer) in the process of being applied. This one may have been published only once, when it appeared in the Boston Sunday Post, August 18, 1918. The headline read BEHOLD THE CAMOUFLAGE, while the caption was worded as follows—

Here is a picture of our Jackies [sailors] helping to make a ship look like what it ain't. All it takes is a couple of mattresses, a few buckets of paint, and a few sweeps of the brush, and you have the perfectly camouflaged ship.

Camouflage, as you may possibly know, is the science of artistic concealment, and the patterns used are preferably cubistic or futuristic, as these are those which conceal the art most perfectly.

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 /  

no more spit and polish / WWI trench mud in your eye

Above Rawley Morgan, "Our Involuntary Disguises" in The London Bystander, March 20, 1918, p, 613.

•••

CAMOUFLAGE TOPIC OF PRESIDIO TALK: Commonest Instance Cited as Clove Eaten by Men Who Go Out Between Acts; MUD HANDIEST IN TRENCH; Captain Gillette Illustrates Fine Points for Student Officers Showing How Shading Is of Great Importance in The Sunday Oregonian (Portland), November 11, 1917, p. 3—

OFFICERS TRAINING CAMP, Presidio of San Francisco, Nov. 10: "Camouflage—a spice known as the clove, largely consumed by men who leave the theater between acts to go and use the telephone."

This is one domestic description of the word camouflage, but it isn't quite the camouflage that is taught for war purposes. The chief ingredients of the camouflage of war, with all due respect to the words of well-known war correspondents like Will Irwin and others, is not paint and artistic ability, but just plain, ordinary mud.

At least such is the declaration of Captain Douglas H. Gillette, Engineer Corps, who recently gave a lecture to the Presidio "officers-to-be" on the subject of camouflage.

Paint is a scarce commodity at the front, and the same is true of burlap and canvas, and when these ingredients are absent the soldier boys find it very easy to do a good camouflaging job by smearing the mud—same mud that is used on football fields in Oregon—over the spokes and caissons of artillery material and otherwise disguising military secrets from the enemy aircraft and other observers.

"It is important, remarked Captain Gillette, "to conceal the heads of the men firing from the trenches."

Trenches Are Obliterated
"There are two ways to conceal heads, and the one chiefly recommended is to obliterate the line of the trenches as much as possible. Daubing the head in mud or dust sounds better to a great many of the student officers, however, for once a man has lost his head his efficiency is greatly curtailed, whereas it is ofttimes possible to recuperate after the loss of a mere trench.

"All camouflage is based on the idea of fooling the enemy by making it appear that what is, is not, and what is not, is. It may apply to a single man or gun or to an entire position. The art is new, but It has been used so extensively that the supply of raffia, from which screens. were made, is exhausted, and they have to use shredded palmetto leaves and Florida moss.

Outlines Broken Up
"If it is sought to hide a battery, the best plan is to break up its outline so it cannot be recognized by enemy airplanes. If a scout is looking for a gun and sees something that looks like a cow he is not likely to boast that he has attained the object of his search. It is a fact that objects are recognized by their shape more than by anything else.

"Things should always be painted dark on top and light below; that is to make shadows look natural. For the same reason painted canvas is sloped at an angle of at least 30 degrees over raised objects. A painted pattern should never be stopped at an edge; it should extend around the corner. Dull colors are best, usually.

"One school of camouflage artists holds that the best way to reduce the visibility of material is by making it look like straw—if it happens to be in a locality where there is straw—or by disguising it as bushes. If there are three or four guns at regular intervals bushes should extend from one to the other; four piles of bushes 30 to 40 feet from each other might enable an airplane scout to penetrate the disguise.

Mud Used Profusely
"Spokes and rims of gun carriages should be spotted with mud. The spots should be irregular and large, as small spots are likely to attract attention. Positions or material may be concealed
by painted canvas or burlap, raffia or wire net, or canvas over wire net. With a bucket of paint and a brush the simplest form of camouflage, painting, may be achieved.

"The armies have taken full advantage of the qualities of wire net. Sometimes miles and miles of road leading to the rear are covered with the net, through which enemy airplanes can see nothing. At times the net extends along the sides of the road.

"When an airplane appears it is a matter of duty and policy for everyone to hide or remain perfectly still. Cartridge cases must never be placed in large piles in these days of scientific war, for the sunlight reflected from their surfaces gives the enemy a guide."

Four Thousand Germans Killed
Captain Gillette points out tho value of concealing even the frontline trenches by a story of a battalion that concealed its position, and, by waiting until the Germans had advanced to within 50 yards of its trench, killed 4000 of the enemy before retreat was possible. The exact line of the parapet should be confusing to the enemy. If it is not, the position may be sighted during the day and heavy damage may be inflicted at night.

Even the entanglements in No Man's Land feel the force of the camouflage idea. Captain Gillette can't understand why they use galvanized wire, which is highly visible and more ex- pensive than that which has not been galvanized. Because wood is more visible than iron, posts that support the wire are of iron.

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 /