The passage refers to a musical composition (embedded within a painting) by American composer John Cage titled Chess Pieces (1944). It suggests a possible link between the chessboard pattern of Cage’s painting and geometric (sometimes checkerboard) color schemes used for so-called dazzle patterns used in World War I and II ship camouflage. If there was in fact a link, the writers surmise, the younger Cage may have learned about "high difference" camouflage from his father, an inventor named John Milton Cage, Sr. The extent to which wartime camouflage was “Cubist-inspired” (a common claim) has long been debated.
•••
Even though neither the structure nor the mechanics of Cage’s score refer specifically to chess, in choosing Chess Pieces as his title, the composer punningly associated its twenty-two movements (pieces) with the pieces of the game. The visual prominence of the notes in the painting also suggests a correlation between the shorthand language of musical notation and that of chess notation. The sixty-four-square chessboard format of the artwork reiterates these ideas. Sixty-four became sacrosanct for Cage in the early 1950s, when he embraced chance operations derived from the sixty-four symbolic hexagrams found in the ancient Chinese I Ching (Book of Changes) as his principal method of composing. He later identified the rigor of chess as “a balance with my use of chance operations.” In addition to the checkerboard pattern of Chess Pieces, the white and black inks Cage used for his musical notations evoke the common colors of the game’s two opposing armies, not to mention the palette of the piano keyboard on which the notes were meant to be played. This alternating gridlike color scheme also calls to mind Cubist- inspired “dazzle” camouflage developed during World War I and redeployed in World War II to disguise naval vessels. Repeating geometric schemes of highly contrasting tonal values, often black and white, applied by artists known as camoufleurs created dramatic optical illusions that prevented ships from being targeted. In Chess Pieces, the staves and musical notes function similarly, veiling the chessboard beneath their shimmering warp and woof. Cage may have been familiar with dazzle camouflage thanks to his father, an inventor who obtained patents for submarine air-delivery, steering, and propulsion systems just before World War I and during World War II researched and developed, with his son’s assistance, a radarlike system to help pilots see through fog. This activity constituted the younger Cage’s sole contribution to the war effort; in late 1942 or early 1943, he received a Class III-A deferment from the draft (“hardship for dependents”) due to the ill health of his wife, Xenia. An avowed pacifist and anarchist in later years, Cage condemned the conflict, admitting: “As a child I was very much impressed by the notion of turning the other cheek. You know, if someone struck me on one cheek, I actually did turn the other cheek. I took that seriously.”
•••
Mrs. P.R. Woodhouse (source unknown)—
A hefty whaler, after some discussion with [British missionary Samuel] Marsden, remarked: “Your religion teaches that if a man is hit on one cheek, he will turn the other.” And he hit Marsden on the right cheek. Marsden obediently offered his left cheek and received a second blow. “Now,” said Marsden, “I have obeyed my Master’s commands. What I do next, he left to my own judgment. Take this.” And he knocked the man down.
RELATED LINKS ship camouflage online video talks
