John Brown fifty years ago / remembering a colleague

Painting by John Brown 1972

While sorting through our art collection, I’ve been looking at an acrylic painting dated 1972, purchased from the artist that year or shortly after. His name was John C. Brown (1934-2019), who for a few years in the 1970s was a faculty colleague at the University of Northern Iowa.

I don’t know the title of the painting, if it had one. But no doubt one reason I bought it is because it so strongly pertains to figure-ground blending or background matching, as is so commonly observed in camouflage, both natural and military.

John was originally from Cedar Falls. He majored in landscape architecture at Iowa State University (Ames), but dropped out in favor of studying art. He completed his BA in Art in 1956 at UNI, then worked for a number of years as a graphic designer and illustrator. He made "studio art" on the side, and was awarded various prizes for his innovative paintings.

At some point he joined the faculty as an instructor of painting. I graduated from the Rhode Island School of Design at the end of 1971, and was invited to teach at UNI in the following spring semester, and I think he was on the faculty then. In the years that followed, he and I (and others) were among the teachers in a highly unusual, untested approach to art foundations, called the Visual World Program.

That program had been launched in the fall semester of 1971 by a newly-hired department head from San Francisco, a man named Kenneth Lash, who had been the Head of Humanities at the San Francisco Art Institute. A rather odd aspect of this was that Lash was not a visual artist but a writer—a poet and an essayist, whom I had initially met in the summer of 1968 at the Aspen School of Contemporary Art in Colorado.

Given that the Visual World curriculum was a quasi-subversive departure from standard foundations courses, as detailed in textbooks at the time, it was controversial from the start. Some of the departmental faculty welcomed it, while others were wary, hesitant or confused. The latter complained they were clueless: What was the program all about? What was it supposed to accomplish? How could it be defined? As I recall, when Lash was approached with questions like that, he would typically reply that the program would eventually shape itself, over a year or two, in the process of trying to teach it.

Some of us reached out to other disciplines. We devised activities that stressed creativity (innovation, humor and problem-solving), perceptual psychology, and the interplay of usually disparate fields. We brought in a stage magician to demonstrate sleight of hand; worked with the physics faculty in making holograms; learned from biologists about the use by ethologists of behavioral dummies; explored stereoscopic vision (including random dot stereograms); constructed airborne works of art; recreated some of the Ames Demonstrations, while learning about their historical link to linear perspective; and so on.

There were deliberate efforts to teach as much through physical engagement as through attending lectures. On occasion, oddball contests were arranged, two of which I still remember vididly: the infamous Rube Goldberg Drawing Machine Contest, and the Groucho Marx Look-Alike Contest.

There were also eccentric exhibits, one of which was originated by John Brown. He partitioned off a section of the floor space in the gallery, then set free within that space an impressive selection of battery-powered motion toys, of the sort that, if collided with, they would adjust their course and continue to move. The full effect consisted of random collisions of various things, like non-stop vehicle mishaps—which continued for a couple of days, until at last the batteries died.

In 1975, Ken Lash and I co-authored an article that was published in Leonardo: Journal of the International Society of Arts, Sciences and Technology (published then by Pergamon Press, it was soon after acquired by MIT Press, and continues now as Leonardo). In that article, titled “The ‘Visual World’ Program at the University of Northern Iowa, USA,” we cited one of John Brown’s most memorable classroom assignments. Known as “the Lemon Experiment,” we described it in the article more or less as follows (although with substantial revison):

A class of twenty students is presented with a shopping bag containing fresh lemons. Each student then selects, randomly, any lemon from the bag. They are told: “Take your lemon with you. Look at it, feel it, smell it. Carry it with you wherever you go, even when you go to sleep. Get to know as much as you can about your lemon without marking, cutting or biting it. Then bring it to class with you when we meet again in two days.”

At the next class meeting, all the lemons are returned to the grocery bag, then spread out on a table top. The students are instructed to retrieve their particular lemons. They are inevitably amazed to find that, with little difficulty, they can indeed identify them. They mostly do this using sight. But some of them, even when blindfolded, can find their lemons by touch and smell. They are left with a new understanding of the rich range of attributes that can be observed and recognized in things that may initially look as if they were indistinguishable.

In a subsequent phase, the students are asked to draw maps of their lemons, which might enable someone else to identify their lemon. Or, in a “lemon substitution” phase, they are asked to create visual puns by purposely misplacing lemons in usually mistaken contexts, such as a “lemon dirigible” or a “lemon pencil sharpener.” They are also assigned to produce a “counterfeit lemon” from any mix of materials (sponges, stuffed socks, or whatever) to explore the possible links between vastly different types of things.

Around 1976, I moved on to another university. John Brown stayed on at UNI, but he too eventually left. Looking through old issues of the student newspaper, there is a story from 1975 which reports that his students had constructed a large “floating painting” which they launched on Prexy’s Pond, a pond near the center of campus. Another one, two years later, shows him with one of his classes. They had been asked to design a package in which a raw egg would survive undamaged when the package was dropped from a building.

John Brown with students

John died in 2019. According to his obituary, he had been living in the Florida Keys for forty years. Following his experience with the Visual World, he had married (to Pam Quegg) and moved to Colorado, had toured the West in a Volkswagen van, and had sailed down the Mississippi. Having finally settled in Florida, he made a living—or so I heard—by selling handmade teddy bears on the beach. “He lived mindfully,” the obituary says, “and savored each moment with passion.” And, consistent with my own memory, he will be “fondly remembered for his big smile and booming cheerful voice.”

Milwaukee illustrator William J. Aylward during WWI

Captain William J. Aylward

Until recently, I don't think I had heard of American artist William J. Aylward (1875-1956). I should have, since he was born and raised in Milwaukee, where I lived and taught for a decade. On the other hand, he left Milwaukee for the East as early as 1903, and his prominence was diminished because, throughout his career, he was dismissed as an illustrator (a commercial or advertising artist) not as a privileged fine artist.

It was interesting to find that Aylward was the son of a Milwaukee Great Lakes ship captain, which explains in part his lifelong fascination with ships and related nautical themes. He served in World War I, not as a camouflage artist, but (as shown in the photograph above) as an official government war artist, which means that he was assigned to complete onsite drawings and paintings of wartime settings and events.

Back in Milwaukee, long before WWI broke out, he had been associated with illustrator Arthur Becher, with whom he was one of the founders of the Milwaukee Art Students League. Later known as the Milwaukee Art Society, among its well-known members were Edward Steichen, Carl Sandburg (Steichen’s brother-in-law), and the painter and sculptor Louis Mayer. Together, Becher and Aylward decided to study illustration with Howard Pyle’s school in Wilmington NJ. Soon after, their lifelong careers began as two of the country’s finest magazine illustrators.

William J. Aylward

Throughout his life, Aylward produced illustrations for such famous books as Jules Verne’s Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, Jack London’s The Sea Wolf, and various others. His wartime work was especially accomplished. Reproduced above is his painting of American troops on the move in France during WWI, with a camouflaged truck in the foreground. Below are three full-color paintings (watercolor and charcoal) of wartime harbor settings, completed in France in 1919. Included in each are portions of a camouflaged ship. 

William J. Aylward

William J. Aylward

William J. Aylward

no camouflage wig / as bald as the dome of St. Paul's

Above Anon, World War I dazzle-camouflaged steamship at wharf in Richmond CA, c1918. Digitally colorized.

•••

E.V. Lucas in The Sphere, reprinted as COINAGE OF WAR WORDS in Vinton Review (Vinton IA), November 14, 1918, p. 3—

[As for camouflage] I cannot remember any instance of a foreign word, so peculiarly un-English as this, not only being so rapidly and universally adopted but also being so rarely mispronounced. I still often overhear knots of men who in their talk about the war refer to the Kay-ser, and the utter anglicization of French battle names by public house military experts is perhaps the most charmIng feature of their discussions; but camouflage remains as French in sound in this country as in its own, and every one uses it. Here, however, it has become so elastic as to be the recognized form for any kind of pretence whatsoever.…

I have been astonished recently by examples of the hold of camouflage on all types of mind. Journeying the other day from a Sussex station to London, under war conditions—fifty of us standing all the way in the guard's van—I had some talk with the guard, who, on removing his cap to wipe a heated brow, revealed himself as bald as the dome of St. Paul’s. It caused him no distress: some men, he remarked, would camouflage it with a wig, but not he. Earlier In the day, my host, a vigilant and suspicious reader of the press, had dismissed an optimistic article on current events as "mere camouflage.” The next day a schoolboy back for the holidays two weeks in advance of the proper time said that a scare of measles had brought about that desired result; at least, that is what the schoolmaster said, but personally he thought it was just camouflage to cover the fact that grub was getting so jolly expensive. And a little Iater a facetious gentleman near me in a restaurant asked the wine waiter to bring him some claret instead of the camouflaged water which he called whisky. Probably the word is in the nursery by this time.

Note As some people will remember, British humorist E.V. Lucas teamed up with George Morrow in 1911 to produce a delightful book of mismatched text and pictures, titled What A Life!, a subject I have talked about in a recent essay on digital montages, but also in a video talk about the logic of comic invention.

Camouflage? Nope, just spots on a performing dog

News article from the Quincy Evening News (Quincy MA), July 31, 1935, p. 2, titled CAMOUFLAGE? NO, JUST DOG SPOTS—

Like a weird dream of a camouflage artist, Chang-Lee appears here, standing on his hind legs in one of the tricks of his extensive repertoire. But those spots were’not painted on Chang-Lee. They just grew on this novelty hairless canine from far-off Indo-China, making a friendly call in this country.

Diary of British camouflage artist Solomon J. Solomon

Solomon tank camouflage scheme

There is an article from the Boston Sunday Post, dated December 24, 1922 (p. B3), titled WAR ‘CAMOUFLAGE ARTIST’ COMPLETES PORTRAIT OF BRITISH ROYAL FAMILY. It tells the story of the delayed completion of a painting of  the Coronation Luncheon at Guildhall, an event that had taken place in 1911. Its culmination was put off by World War I. The artist assigned to complete it was Solomon J. Solomon, who is described in the article as “the most famous portrait painter in Europe today.”

When the war began, Solomon assumed that it would not greatly interfere with his artistic career, but it “interrupted him absolutely” because the government soon discovered [by way of his own prompting] that he was the one man in England familiar with the art of camouflage.” He was sent to France, to learn about that country’s section de camouflage, which was under the command of Lucien-Victor Guirand de Scevola. For a time, Solomon was the head of British Army camouflage, during which he oversaw the construction of imitation dead tree observation posts, advocated the use of overhead garnished nets (the shadows of which broke up the shapes of things below), aka "umbrella camouflage," and proposed designs for tank camouflage.

Solomon was the author of one of the first books on wartime deception, titled Strategic Camouflage (London: John Murray, 1920). Earlier, he had also published The Practice of Oil Painting and Drawing (London: Seeley, 1910).

Until recently, I had not realized that there is another book about him which contains extensive excerpts from his wartime diaries. That source is Olga Somech Phillips, Solomon J. Solomon: A Memoir of Peace and War (London: Herbert Joseph, 1933). Quoted below are a few passages (pertaining to camouflage mostly) from Solomon’s diary.

[p. 127] The French observation post trees were round; I made mine oval, so that that part of them facing the Germans should appear too small for a man to ascend; this was later adopted by the French.…

It was proposed in my report that I should need the assistance of three painters. I had made up my mind about these—two scene painters about whom I would consult Mr. Joseph Harker—and a theatrical property maker…

Harker had recommended to me Oliver Bernard—a small man, very deaf, who staged the operas at Covent Garden—a good organizer. He, on his return from New York, was on the Lusitania when she was torpedoed. He was rescued from the sea. He couldn’t swim a stroke and attributed his luck to a mascot he always wore, and which—in his opinion—would safeguard him throughout the war.

[p. 134] B—— spoke of his admiration for Giron[sic] de Scevola, the head of the French camouflage, who had, after much difficulty from the French Army people, to accept the idea of camouflage…

Scevola would only accept the rank of lieutenant, but stipulated that no one should be above him. He was—and is—a fashionable Parisian portrait painter, dressed very smartly, and invariably wore white kid gloves…

[p. 143] Who says the painter can’t organize? This seemed to be a military prejudice. When an artist is composing an imaginative picture his organizing faculties are at full stretch.

[p. 149] 11th March—…Major Alexander wanted some dummy heads—these dummies were made to attract fire, so that German snipers could be located—the line of fire would be indicated by putting a small stick through the back and front holes made by the sniper’s bullet.

Hitherto, adopting the French plan, we had mounted these heads on round sticks, and Major Alexander told me that often these would tend to turn in the hand, so that the exact direction was lost. In future I mounted the heads on square sticks fitted with a square sheath with cross feet; ths could be kept firmly in place. I had modeled several heads from our men who sat for them and I became quite a decent sculptor. The clay model was cast in plaster from which moulds were taken, and the pressing of successive sheets of paper saturated with flour paste into the moulds produced a sort of Guy Fawkes mask. We turned out quite large numbers of these papier mache “Tommies” which I colored from life.

…the Secretary of the French Camouflage Corps, asked me to model him, which I did, he wanted to send a paper mache reproduction of himself to his wife at Bordeaux. This added to our stock of types.

[p. 155] Wednesday, 22nd March—Giron[sic] de Scevola invited us all to dine with him at our little hotel at Wimereux, and an excellent meal it was for so small an inn. The Frenchmen sang and made witty speeches and kept it up till quite late. I was looking forward to returning the compliment when next de Scevola came our way, but that was not to be. We artists got on well with our French confreres.

WWII aircraft factories hidden from enemy aerial view

Above An aerial view of the Lockheed-Vega aircraft factory in Burbank CA, during WWII, when the entire facility was hidden beneath a vast simulation of houses, stores and residential neighborhoods.

•••

CAMOUFLEURS GOT BUSY in Daily News (Perth, Western Australia) August 4, 1945, p. 10—

The US entered World War II with many a war plant that needed careful defense.

Among the most vulnerable were flimsily protected airplane plants along the eastern and western coasts. They were unexpendable and immovable. Their nakedness demanded some sort of wrapping.

So the US Corps of Engineers put to work a motley legion of industrial designers, billboard painters, crack Hollywood illusionists, and serious artists.

By last week, workmen were yanking wire trees and make-believe houses off many camouflaged war plants.

The makeup job had been costly: Fullblown protective concealment of thirty-seven vital plants had cost 22 million dollars. Other money went for simpler tone-down work, or “disruptive painting,” at smaller plants and airfield hosts.

In the heat of its enthusiasm for plenty of camouflage, the Corps of Engineers gave out contracts for disguising fields hundreds of miles inland.

Famed industrial designer Raymond Loewy turned camoufleur to plan the two million dollar “passive protection” of Baltimore’s Glenn Martin bomber factory.

Warner Brothers technicians had to protect the big Douglas plants at Santa Monica against twin risks. Within easy periscope sight from the Pacific, it was vulnerble to shells as well as bombs.

Douglas airfield architects had their camouflage plan ready before Pearl Harbor. They made minatures, then photographed them from simulated bombing altitudes.

Building the dummy airport, phony plants, and a fake residential [neighborhood], complete with washing on clotheslines, took two and a half years, and cost two and a half million dollars.

It was duplicated on the plants when the war came.

Masking the consolidated plant at San Diego called for great nets draped over the Pacific Highway.

At Seattle, the task was difficult.

Boeing’s Flying Fortress plant was sandwiched between busy Boeing Field and a natural landmark, the Duwamish River.

Camoufleurs hid the field so trickily that veteran pilots had to ask the way in.

Atop the Boeing plants went a 26-acre village, made of chicken wire, canvas, lumber and painted chicken featers. The town had fifty-three houses, stores and a gas station.

Some of its streets crossed the field, went up Beacon Hill.

Camoufleurs skipped the river.

•••

Below The large, concealed underground parking lot at the Lockheed-Vega plant in Burbank.

camouflage contributions by Houdini, other magicians

Above Roy R. Behrens, Misdirection (©2021). Digital montage.

•••

William Kalush and Larry Sloman, The Secret Life of Houdini: The Making of America’s First Superhero. New York: Atria Books, 2007, p. 338—

[In April 1917, on the day after the US had entered World War I, American magician Harry] Houdini introduced a resolution at the Society of American Magicians’ [SAM] meeting that was unanimously passed that “its members collectively and individually do hereby tender their loyalty to the President of the United States of America and express a desire to render such service to the country as may be within their province.”…

Houdini led the war efforts of magicians by example. On June 2, Houdini was nominated for president of the SAM and elected unanimously without opposition. Taking control of the house organ, M-U-M, Houdini began filling the pages with news of the SAM members' contributions to the war cause, and even reproduced an article from The New York Times that described how the US government was actively seeking magicians and mystifiers to aid in the wartime effort.

Fellow magicians took up Houdini's call. Archie Engel, a Washington DC, magician, became a secret agent for the Treasury Department during the war. Dr. Maximllian Toch, a chemist and New York City SAM member, was put in charge of the military's camouflage division and, working with other magicians, he developed the battleship gray formula used by the US Navy. Toch’s chemical expertise was also used in devising ways to transmit secret messages. Eventually, a camouflage section of the Regular US Army Engineers was formed and the SAM members from all over the country enlisted in it and shared their expertise for the war effort. An amateur magician named Dr. Charles Mendelsohn, who was an expert cryptographer, was put in charge of deciphering German codes for the U.S. Military lntelligence Division. Even before we entered the war, the Department of Justice hired a magician named Wilbur Weber to do counterintelligence on German spies who were operating in the Northwest. He used his magic tour as a cover for his spying activities.

don't paint your Chevy Blazer in high visibility orange

Above Full-page feature article on WWII camouflage, titled Dazzle Painting Amazingly Effective in Modern Warfare, as published in the Boston Sunday Post in the Color Feature Section, December 17, 1939, p. 4. Large size, readable online text can be found by searching vintage newspaper sites.

•••

The following interview was conducted through email exchanges in the early months of 2013. It was a conversation between Rich Dana, now Special Collections and Archives' Sackner Archive Project coordinator librarian at the University of Iowa, and Roy R. Behrens, now Professor Emeritus and Distinguished Scholar at the University of Northern Iowa. The resulting text was published in Issue Number 8 of Obsolete! Magazine: The Journal of DIY Analog Anarchy (Iowa City IA), which Dana was founding editor of, an experimental magazine that is now apparently obsolete (aha!). In its published form, the interview was a bit longer, and slight adjustments in wording have also been made. Copyright for the text belongs to the interview participants.

•••

Obsolete Magazine [Rich Dana]: I discovered your work while doing some research on dazzle camouflage. You’ve written quite a bit about dazzle patterns as well as the role of artists in the history of camouflage. Can you give us some background on how you became interested in that?

Roy Behrens: I started writing about it in the late 1960s. I got into camouflage because I was a graphic designer. The big “trade secret” in design is knowing how people are likely to see. At some point I realized that I could learn about that by hiding or disguising things. In other words, camouflage uses the exact same principles as design. It’s just reverse engineering.

OM: Was this like subliminal advertising?

RB: It’s certainly not unrelated to that, but they’re not the same. In subliminal advertising, it was claimed that images were concealed in magazine ads and film trailers, to function as “hidden persuaders.” The principles that we apply in design and camouflage are more straightforward, such as pointing, rhyming and lining things up. They are subliminal to some extent, because they influence us, regardless of whether we are aware of it.

OM: Obviously, the idea of camouflage is an ancient one. When did it become a field of scientific research?

RB: We can thank Charles Darwin for that. Scientists and naturalists became interested in animal camouflage in the late 19th century, because they thought it offered proof of natural selection, the survival of the fittest. But a big breakthrough came in the 1890s when an American artist named Abbott Handerson Thayer realized that camouflage is based on the same “tricks of the trade” that he had learned while studying art at the French Academy.

OM: I'm fascinated by the idea that camo is a type of art that is used to defeat technology. It seems that it’s almost akin to magic to me. Of course, Arthur C. Clarke said that "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." Is camouflage art, technology or both?

RB: I think it’s pertinent to both art and technology, but to lots of other stuff as well. The key thing to remember is that camouflage depends on a relationship. It’s a perpetually shifting relation between an observer (these days it could be a drone or whatever) and the object or person that’s being observed. A deer can’t see high visibility orange, but that same color is blaringly obvious to humans. To camouflage something, you have to know what kind of visual system you are trying to conceal it from. In other words, camouflage has to keep up with surveillance, and vice versa—it takes two to tango.

OM: Camo is typically associated with the military. Are there civilian uses for camo, other than hunting?

RB: Actually, there’s a long rich tradition of using camouflage for non-military purposes. For example, you just mentioned magic, which famously works by “fooling the eye.” And there are lots of other uses in stage productions, fashion design, cosmetics, architecture and so on. And of course, some of the most successful camouflage practitioners are in marketing and politics. Camouflage is also used in other forms such as language. Maybe I should mention that recently I’ve been exchanging emails with a university student in the UK who’s working on proposals for benign, non-military uses of camouflage. There’s a lot that could be done in that area. Mostly he’s developing ways to make certain things around us (windmills or cell towers, for example) less like eyesores, and, at same time, to make critical landmarks more conspicuous. But this is a shifting relation as well: Since it’s common now for everyone to walk around in camouflage or high visibility orange clothing, it’s not as easy to be sure who’s really an emergency worker and who isn’t.

OM: Let's talk about dazzle camouflage. To me, dazzle represents very much the spirit of the Modern era. Does that make sense? It seems to be consistent with what was going on at the start of the 20th century, technologically and artistically, and, in some ways, even in psychology, in the use of abstract patterns, and so on.

RB: Over the years, a lot people have said exactly that about the resemblance between camouflage and certain branches of Modernism. During World War I, one of the British Vorticists [Edward Wadsworth] was a dock supervisor for ship camouflage. And there’s the famous story about Picasso seeing French military camouflage for the first time, and saying to Gertrude Stein, “Aha, we invented that. That’s Cubism.” There’s a ton of other examples of this, and my books are attempts to identify those. Hundreds (maybe thousands) of artists, designers and architects served as military camouflage consultants (they ecame known as “camoufleurs”) during both World Wars. But oddly enough,those who were responsible for the most bizarre dazzle patterns had been mostly traditional artists before. And after the war ended, their art careers completely collapsed—because, ironically, their artwork wasn’t Modern enough.

OM: Can you talk a little about how dazzle was conceived and developed, and what made dazzle patterns effective?

RB: The term as it’s now commonly used is more or less synonymous with any pattern that is made up of a hodgepodge of high contrast, distinctively-colored shapes. I call it “high difference” camouflage (because the figure breaks apart), and I distinguish it from “high similarity” camouflage (in which a figure blends in with its background or surrounding). Historically, however, the meaning and purpose of “dazzle painting” was much more specific. It was a kind of ship camouflage that was developed by British artists during World War I. Its primary function was not to hide a ship on the ocean (that wasn’t possible back then), but rather to make it confusing to view through the periscope of a German U-boat. It’s a complex subject, but the idea was mostly to “spoil the aim” (to throw off the calculations) of submarine torpedo gunners. It’s popular now for people to say that dazzle painting was ineffective, but the more you learn about the circumstances, the more apparent it becomes that it did indeed work.

OM: I’ve noticed that dazzle patterns are increasingly used in fashion. Asymmetrical haircuts and face-paint are being used successfully to subvert facial recognition software and surveillance cameras. Any thoughts on this? It's a very 80's cyberpunk dystopian sci-fi look. I love it! But do you think it will be effective? It seems to have a deus ex machina quality to it, in the sense that it undermines digital technology, not with more advanced technology, but with age-old simple tools like abstraction and facepainting.

RB: That’s a curious turnabout, isn’t it. I’ve been following the research on how to prevent digital face recognition, and apparently it works for now. But that too is indebted to Modernism, since it’s related to research that began with the Gestalt psychologists in the 1920s. Not surprisingly, the Gestaltists also wrote about camouflage, and about graphic design principles.

OM: That's really interesting. So essentially it’s about how the brain processes data that it receives from the eyes. Facial recognition computers programs look for geometric specifics of the structure of the face, rather than hair color, skin color, etc, which are really culturally programmed ways that humans see.

RB: Much of what we’re talking about is being confirmed by current brain research. There seem to be aspects of vision that are learned and culture-laden. On the other hand (and this especially interests me), there are also inherent, hard-wired defaults of vision that “come in the box” with everyone’s brain. If we go to war with another country, we can be sure that they will be hoodwinked (to some extent) by the same camouflage patterns that throw us off: figure-ground blending, figure disruption (or dazzle), mimicry, and the combined use of blending and dazzle.

OM: Correct me if I'm wrong here, but I think historically there are a lot of examples of technologically “inferior” forces defeating vastly "superior" forces by using the environment to their advantage. Doesn't it seem like the growing surveillance state will always be running to catch up with the low-tech workarounds of the indigenous population?

RB: Well, you could put it that way. Again, the two sides have to correlate, and conditions are constantly changing. But in a way, everything’s a workaround, whether low tech or high. So you could say that, yes, high tech will always be struggling to keep one step ahead of Rube Goldbergian workarounds. But in the same way, low tech will always be struggling to jerry-rig new workarounds. One thing is certain: their dance is unlikely to ever conclude, short of a massive, finite end.

OM: I’m changing direction here: I started thinking about this when I bought an old Chevy Blazer from the National Guard. It is painted "forest" camo, I guess you would call it, mostly olive drab with black and brown. It's a spray can job, so it’s wearing out fast and I need to repaint it. So I began researching other patterns, and thinking about the Iowa landscape. Ideally, what sort of patterns and colors would be most effective in our environment?

RB: It depends on why you’re doing this. If you effectively decrease the vehicle’s visibility by matching it with the Iowa landscape, you might increase your chances of getting hit by another driver. And even then, what is the “Iowa landscape”? Urban, woodland, cornfield, grass? And in what season of the year? Now and then I’ve thought about putting a camouflage pattern on my car, but I’ve always opted out. In relation to choosing a season, if I painted it white for the winter, I wouldn’t want to drive it home during one of those Iowa snowstorm white-outs.

OM: I also considered putting a WWI naval dazzle pattern on it, just as an art project. It would be sort of ironic because it would be the most noticeable vehicle in the parking lot.

RB: I thought about this too, when I was considering my own car. Like you, I have a great fondness for dazzle patterns, so I thought I wouldn’t want my car to blend with the surroundings. I would prefer that it stand out dramatically (like those WWI dazzle-painted ships), and be painted in a clever way that uses confusing brightly-colored shapes to distort the physical shape of the car. But then I thought, that’s really asking for trouble: First, it would stand out in the parking lot and probably get vandalized. Second, when I’m on the road, it might be so confusing to see that I could end up getting hit. Or third, if it’s too distracting to other drivers, they might collide with other cars. Well, whatever you decide, don’t paint your Chevy Blazer in high visibility orange—or you’ll get run into by a deer.

OM: Ha! That would be ironic to say the least! Here's a thought; from what you have said about relationships, landscape and how people see, perhaps a car painted with primer would be the best all purpose camouflage. Culturally, I think people might look past it because primer paint represents lower social status. Just the way people look past a homeless person on the street. Parked in a lot it might be less likely to be broken into. In a field, it might be seen as abandoned. On the flipside of course, driving home late at night, it might be more likely to draw the attention of law enforcement, who are programmed to see something else.

RB: If we continue with this train of thought, we may end up putting antlers on your car, covering it with flocked wallpaper—or better yet, with chia sprouts—and transforming it into an automated jackalope. That might cut down on traffic too, since no one else would want to be seen driving beside it.…

 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

 Under the big top at Sims' circus

Norman Wilkinson / use railway stations as galleries

Above Norman Wilkinson (1884-1934), A FEW CARELESS WORDS MAY END IN THIS, lithographic poster, c.1940.

•••

KMD, Listening in on the World, in Fayetteville Democrat (Fayetteville AR) January 14, 1926, p. 2—

There is an interesting movement on foot in England at the present time. Its aim is to convert the great "railway stations" into art centers for the people. Norman Wilkinson, marine painter of great distinction, is the leader of the group, who are working out this idea.

Norman Wilkinson is a man of many gifts. His name is well-known in the navy for it was he who invented "dazzle-painting." It will be remembered that the introduction of this method of camouflaging ships was one of the turning-points of the war. Along with his charming young wife, Mr. Wilkinson visited Washington in 1918 by invitation of the naval authorities, to whom he explained his system.

In an unusual manner Norman Wilkinson combines the qualities of an artist with those of a business man. When not engaged on his large canvases, one of which sells for many thousands of dollars, he has never been too proud to put some fine work into poster for a shipping company. These posters are naturally much better than the average, and it has been noticed that the crowds in the waiting rooms where they hang, are not, as might have been expected, indifferent to their superiority. On the contrary, the beauty of these marine subjects seems to be much appreciated by "the man in the street." Now artists of the first note are engaged in making the former dingy waiting-rooms into homes of beauty and cheer. Listening In American depots, being large and well-designed, would lend themselves admirably to a similar purpose. They are indeed far more suited to it than those in Great Britain. We are in correspondence with Norman Wilkinson and hope soon to let the readers hear more about his ideas.

SEE ALSO

Camilla Wilkinson article on dazzle camouflage

Embedded Figures, Art, and Camouflage (26 min. video talk)

WWII US Army camouflage experiments at Fort Belvoir

For years I have searched vintage newspapers, looking for little-known articles on art and camouflage, with the intention of restoring them to a readable state, and sharing them with others who are interested in the subject.

Above is one from the Boston Sunday Post, Your World Section, March 16, 1941 (larger-sized scans with readable text can be found through online searches of newspaper archives). 

Written by James Miller, the title of this feature is The Army Prepares to Disguise the Nation. The article is an overview of wartime camouflage experiments at Fort Belvoir VA, twenty miles outside of Washington DC. Note the large scale illustration of two soldiers concealed in a background of foliage, and, below that, two men demonstrating camouflage-patterned uniforms.

RELATED VIDEO SERIES

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

the cat's pajamas / duplicitious color uses in nature

Until a few years ago, I used to give a slide talk called THE CAT'S PAJAMAS: Animal Camouflage / The Hidden Creatures in our Yards [above]. But the pandemic put a stop to that. So I repurposed the in-person slide talk (with considerable improvement) as a free online video called NATURE, ART AND CAMOUFLAGE: Duplicitous Uses of Color (as shown below), which continues to be popular.

 

as styles evolve, no need to camouflage chunky feet

Above This is strange. It’s a news article from the Boston Sunday Globe, dated July 2, 1939, page 2 (only weeks before the outbreak in Europe of World War II). It’s a discussion of women’s shoe styles in relation to foot size. It claims, in essence, that women are no longer insistent on having small-sized, “dainty” feet. In buying shoes, they are choosing comfort over pain. But then, by means of a curious seque, the author credits this change of attitude to the use of ship camouflage in WWI. Here is the reasoning—

Women have never had an active desire to have dainty feet. Twenty years ago, however, they felt that large feet made them conspicuous; in those days the cartoonists frequently used to jeer at them, call them gunboats and similar names. So dainty feet became the style. Now shoe stores keep sizes 10 and 11 on hand for women who are not ashamed to ask for them.

Shoe manufacturers have contributed more than their bit to this change in point of view. The styles of the last decade have provided for what used to be called gunboats much the same sort of camouflage that the navy paints on battleships in wartime. Color combinations make the large shoe less conspicuous. The sandal type of shoe, with the toe and heel cut out, aimed to make the foot look smaller.

scientists adapt wartime devices for peacetime uses

World War I US Navy camoufleurs

Above This is a wonderfully detailed photograph (digitally colorized) from World War I of members of the US Navy’s Camouflage Section in Washington DC. Headed by Everett Longley Warner, and referred to as the Camouflage Design Subsection, these four men are in process of assembling wooden ship models. When completed, these models were then painted in camouflage patterns, and subsequently tested (in a periscope-equipped observation theatre), to determine their effectiveness in causing German U-boat gunners to make miscalculations in preparing to fire torpedoes.

We were reminded of this photograph when we recently found an article in the New York Sun, dated April 27, 1919, p. 8, as shown below in a restored and rearranged version. It is one of a series of US government photographs that were released to the public for use in news articles, perhaps in 1918 or early 1919. It was reproduced in the top left of what is nearly a full-page article. In the bottom center of the article, I have inserted a much clearer version of the same photograph.

A full-size scan of the original article can be found online, by searching through newspaper archives. The small-scale version posted here is not readable as such, but the topmost headline is: Scientists Hard at Work Turning War Inventions to Peace Uses. It’s a fairly detailed article, and it talks about aspects of camouflage-related research that one rarely sees discussed. During the war, underwater microphones were used by both sides of the conflict as a way of detecting the approach of enemy ships or submarines that were not yet visible. In this article, it is revealed that (now that the war is about to conclude) those same microphones might be used to detect the location and condition of miners who become buried underground when mines collapse.

There is even a brief description of the interior workings of the work area of the Design Subsection, which was located in “the new Navy Building.” The article continues: “At the rear of the office is a door leading into a back room which presents a very unusual appearance. Against the wall appears a collection of miniature ships carefully modeled and painted in curious and bizarre colors. An odd looking instrument is noted which, it later develops, is the periscope of a submarine.” 

detailed account of the process

mouse catcher shaped like harmless paper clip / 1929

Above  RMS Aquitania, showing dazzle camouflage design, in harbor at Halifax, Nova Scotia, c1918.

•••

Camouflage for Mice in Earlville Review (Earlville IA) November 28, 1929, p. 9— 

Camouflage, which helped to win the World War, is being employed in Europe to catch mice. On the theory that rodents of today know their traps, inventors have produced, for use In office desks, a mouse-catcher shaped like a harmless paper clip. Another, for general use, resembles an old tin can whose top closes suddenly. Still another resets itself automatically to catch mice all night and dump them into a vat of water.

WWI checkerboard pattern used for object disruption

Above A vintage postcard (we’ve blogged about it before) of a checkerboard-patterned fortress, called Spitbank Fort, built in 1859, near Portsmouth, England. We were inevitably reminded of it when we saw a comparable application of checkerboard camouflage on WWI artillery, shown below.

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

 Under the big top at Sims' circus

US ship camouflage as an exact science / 1919 WWI

This article appeared in the Boston Sunday Globe on June 1, 1919, p. 112. It is unsigned, but the information would suggest that the writer had obtained firsthand information from Everett Longley Warner, who was in charge of the Design Subsection of the US Navy's Camouflage Section during World War I. Most articles on the subject then were replete with errors, but this one is an exception to that.

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

 Under the big top at Sims' circus

contributions of Hollywood to WWI ground camouflage

Above Camouflage pattern (digitally-colorized, thus historically unreliable) on World War I huge long-range artillery, mounted for railway transport, c1918, unknown source.

•••

G.P. Harleman, News of Los Angeles and Vicinity in The Moving Picture World, December 1, 1917—

Lawson Organizes Camouflage Artists
Lee Lawson, [Hollywood] technical expert, has received from the Adjutant General authorization to form a company of two hundred and fifty men of the [motion picture] studio plants for the camouflage department to be incorporated in the Twenty-Fourth Engineers.

Lawson has been engaged at his trade locally for the past twelve years. He recently asked for authority to organize a company of camouflage artists. His appointment was made by Secretary of War [Newton] Baker.

All the ingenuity of “trick stuff” manifested in motion pictures will be transplanted to the camouflage activities in France. Scene painters, artists, sculptors, property men and numerous other classes of employees in studios will comprise the company.

Lawson already has sixty-four men enrolled. These will leave in a few days for American Lake [near Lakewood], Washington, where they will receive instruction in the most advanced methods of camouflage work.

•••

G.P. Harleman, News of Los Angeles and Vicinity in The Moving Picture World, December 15, 1917, page 1637—

Camouflage Artists Leave for Training
The greatest camouflage company in the world, according to Major George P. Robinson, United States Engineers Corps, left Los Angeles November 24, for an eastern training camp. There wre sixty-five men in the part, headed by Lee Lawson of the Universal. The personnel were recruited almost exclusively from the leading motion picture studios of Los Angeles.

“Nowhere else in the world could a company of men of similar qualifications have been recruited,” said Major Robinson. “The best scenic artists and men of kindred trades in the motion picture industry are here.”

Just before the train pulled out of the station Lee Lawson made a short speech to the crowd. “Friends, we’re going over there to fool the Kaiser, and if Yankee genius counts for anything we’ll be there with the goods,” he said.

The leave taking was different from any farewells given any party of soldiers leaving Los Angeles heretofore. Sixty-five young men, all of them known personally to the five hundred or more persons who bade them goodbye, caused everybody to cry goodbye to everybody else. It was a scene not easily forgotten.

•••

News of Cinema and Film Gossip in The New York Sun, February 2, 1919, p. 39—

Lieutenant Lee Lawson, former technical director, Sergeant Clarence DeWitt and Sergeant H. Divver, formerly of Universal City, for over nine months members of a camouflage regiment in France, has returned to the studio. When America entered the war Lieutenant Lee [sic] assembled scenic artists, sculptors, directors and property men in a camouflage platoon. He was wounded twice, Sergeant DeWitt gassed, and Sergeant Divver wounded twice.

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

 Under the big top at Sims' circus

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.  

RELATED VIDEO SERIES

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

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.

RELATED VIDEO SERIES

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

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. 

RELATED VIDEO SERIES

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

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.