Dr. George Washington Carver and WWII camouflage

CARVER WORKS TO BEFUDDLE AXIS ENEMIES: Paint Formulae For Camouflage New Project in Jackson Advocate (Jackson MS), August 22, 1942, p 1—

Tuskegee, Ala., August 20—Students of Tuskegee Institute may soon be walking to their classes over the tops of luxuriant forests and eating their morning cereal under the blue waters of a picturesque lake. The Institute’s purebred Holsteins may be a bit surprised to find that what appears to be murky swamp crosses their familiar lush of kudzu pasture. And the herd of milk goats—oh well, goats are supposed to be silly enough to eat anything, ersatz or otherwise.

President F.D. Patterson has recently turned over a portion of the Tuskegee campus to Austin W. Curtis, assistant to Dr. George W. Carver, internationally famous scientist, as an outdoor testing field for application of camouflage paints to various types of surfaces.

Mr. Curtis is working night and day at the Carver Laboratories at Tuskegee Institute on paint formulae to be used by the War Department for camouflage activities by the US armed forces.

Mr. Curtis recently returned from Detroit, Mich., where he spent much time with the research chemists in the laboratories of the Ford plant, testing various products for use in the war effort.

Previous to the Detroit visit Mr. Curtis went to Fort Belvoir, Va., for conferences with army officials relative to the use of Carver paints for camouflage purposes.  

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disruptive coloration used not to conceal, to advertise

Above An Ambulance Used Effectively in a Wartime Campaign, Decorated Camouflage-Fashion for the Purpose of Attracting Attention. Popular Mechanics (c1919).

CAMOUFLAGE AMBULANCE ADVERTISES “DRIVE” / A striking feature of a wartime “drive” recently conducted in Chicago was an ambulance that had been elaborately decorated camouflage-fashion. Thousands of persons looking down into the city streets saw this truck with its top painted in mottled hues and at once their curiosity was aroused. If the vehicle’s appearance was not strictly in accord with army regulations, it nevertheless served as an excellent advertisement for a good cause.

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WWI proof / children know the meaning of camouflage

Above and below These are two uncredited photographs that appeared in American publications during World War I (c1918). The top one shows the camouflage-patterned wings of a National Service airplane. The patterning works as well as it does in part because it is a grayscale photograph, so the dark disruptive shapes on the wings and tail blend in all too easily with the shadows and other irregular shapes on the ground. In addition, the symmetrical target-like circles contradict whatever confusion is caused by surface disruption.

The photograph at the bottom is even more suspect, if for different reasons. It claims to show three children holding up a toy model airplane on which they have painted a comparable disruptive scheme. The caption for the photograph reads—

Even youngsters soon learn war terms. These three, for instance, are proud to display their toy aeroplane [airplane], the mottled finish of which shows that they know the meaning of “camouflage.”

Today, in an era in which digital photo retouching is epidemic, we may not be surprised to find that this pre-computer image appears to have been retouched by hand. The contours of the chidren’s figures, as well as the shape of the airplane, have undoubtedly been strengthened, and the facial features of the figure in the center look suspiciously like an adult. 

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camouflage application / women's limited capabilities

Above This an oddity, to be sure. I'm uncertain where I found it, but I do know that the original photograph (grayscale only, but misleadingly AI-colorized here) was published in The American Machinest (c1918), with the photo caption of "The finished product—American made gun and tractor—Detroit, Mich." The original image is an elongated horizontal, but, in order to show it in detail here, I have sliced it into three parts and stacked the sections. The article which it illustrates describes the process by which the camouflage design was applied to the tractor, which had been driven into a "camouflage room," where it was initially assumed that only men (not women) would be capable of painting the pattern. The article goes on to say—

Here a process never before used was applied. Paint guns had been used for the two coats of olive drab, but it did not stop at that point. One man marked off the camouflage design with chalk and marked each recess with the numbers 1, 2 or 3, number 1 being green, number 2 buff, and number 3 yellow. Each painter was given a number—1, 2 or 3.  Number 1, using green paint, painted every place on the tractor that was marked 1, while number 2, using buff, filled in every place marked 2, and 3 proceeded in like manner. After the first few tractors had been run through in this manner, it was found that women could do this work as well as men, and women were hired, relieving the men for heavier work. The black striping was done by a man at the end of the paint line. The total time required for assembling armor, tool box and camouflaging was one hour.

real burlesque, as you like it, without any camouflage

Oliver Herford (c1880). Public Domain.

Edmund Wilson, The Twenties: From Notebooks and Diaries of the Period. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1975, p. 234-235—

National Winter Garden. Speaking between the acts—someone had said, apropos of some risqué Broadway comedy, that when he wanted to hear “dubble-entenders,” he would rather go to the National Winter Garden. “Because here’s where you get burlesque as you like it, without any camouflage—sincere dubble-entenders.”

Joakim Derlow camouflage exhibition in Stockholm

Derlow Exhibition (Stockholm)

Joakim Derlow describes himself as an “artist from Sweden with outposts in Amsterdam and Stockholm.” I think he first contacted me very early this year, because of his great interest in camouflage and especially (myself as well) in art and camouflage compared. Since then we have batted emails back and forth, along with images, research references and quotes. During most of the year, he has been preparing for an exhibition on the subject, as well as a publication in which he collects and assesses a medley of historical finds.

I have just last evening received from him an email with photographs of his on-going exhibition. Two of them are included here. They show the installed exhibition in Stockholm. As he states in his message, and as is clearly evident in the photographs—

Central in the space is a camouflage net made together with Ukrainian refugees living in Poland. The net manifests the artistic quality of camouflage in the art space before it is sent to the frontlines by the end of the exhibition. An object that passes between the decorative and the utilitarian depending on what side of the border it finds itself. Other works are uniforms mounted on stretcher frames to once again become paintings like the artists that made these camouflage patterns in the first place.

If you browse around the visible space in the photographs, you can see quite a few art and camouflage icons. Among my favorites is the elongated black rectangular panel on the wall, very nearly ceiling height. It is a cut-out silhouette of a bird (no doubt a pheasant), like those that Abbott H. Thayer proposed (another bird flies over the top).

Also, among my favorite features is the wall-mounted moulding on the right wall, from which book-like clusters of pages are hung from wooden pegs. I applaud the otherall color scheme. But this moulding with things suspended from pegs reminds me of comparable racks on which the Shakers hung their chairs, to suspend them while they swept the floor.

It is so encouraging to see that Joakim has succeeded in bringing all this together. You may be able to follow his work at <https://derlow.net/>. It’s my understanding that he plans to take this further, to an even more ambitious stage, and perhaps it will become a book.

By wonderful coincidence, last evening, as I was reading Joakim’s email, my wife Mary came in from the garden to tell me that while she was picking beans, she touched what was not a bean but a beautiful praying mantis—same size, shape and color, of course. Now, this morning, she has taken me out to the garden, and we have been able to find the praying mantis again—it is still hanging about in the beans.

Derlow Exhibition (Stockholm)