Camouflage | The Seafaring Circus of Admiral Sims

Sims' Circus

On April 16, 1918, an American artist named Childe Hassam was walking in Riverside Park in New York, when he saw a strangely painted transport ship, anchored in the Hudson River. We no longer know the name of the ship, nor do we know its color. The only surviving image is Hassam's black ink lithographic print that confirms that it was painted in a wartime camouflage scheme called dazzle painting.

An American Impressionist painter and a member of a group of artists called The Ten, Hassam had long been interested in natural camouflage, including the puzzling disruptions produced when streaks of light and shadow fall across an animal's form. On that particular afternoon, he could not resist the temptation to make an on-site sketch of this nautical curiosity.

But before he could finish the drawing he was interrupted by a New York policeman and taken into custody…>>more

New York Times Article on WWI Dazzle Camouflage

NYC ship camouflage by Tauba Auerbach (2018)

We were quoted in The New York Times this morning in an interesting article by James Barron on the last of a series of ships that have been repainted in "dazzle camouflage" designs. The project, which began in 2014 and ends this year, was initiated by the British. This is the first American ship to be painted, as a reminder of the collaborative wartime camouflage work of the UK and the US during the Great War.