who cut off your tie at the Art Academy of Cincinnati?

Batchelor and Behrens / Art Academy of Cincinnati

In the late 1980s, I was living in Cincinnati OH, where I was head of the graphic design program at the Art Academy of Cincinnati. It was an interesting place at the time, the school as well as the city, and I have enduring memories of wonderful students and colleagues. After more than thirty years, I am still in contact with some of them.

Among my favorite colleagues from those days was a British-born printmaker named Anthony (Tony) Batchelor, who died a few months ago. The two of us, given the right circumstances, were prone to bursting out with Pythonesque sillyness. I still have a photograph (shown here) of Tony and myself at one of those spontaneous moments.

In 1981, I had published a book called Art and Camouflage: Concealment and Deception in Nature, Art and War. It did not sell particularly well, but it received sufficient attention (as from the Whole Earth Catalog, for example) that it acheived some small notoreity as one of the early books about the role that artists played in the study of camouflage, both in nature and in war. 

Various things happened as a result: In 1988, soon after I joined the faculty at AAC, the school succeeded in obtaining a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts to host a community-wide series of activities (talks, exhibits, and other events) on the theme of art and camouflage. 

That same year I was contacted by British documentary filmmakers who were in process of making a film on the same subject, to air on television in both the US and the UK. The UK version was titled The Art of Deception, and appeared as a segment of Equinox on BBC televison (the name Cincinnati was misspelled). The American version, titled Disguises of War, was broadcast as part of NOVA on American Public Television, by way of WGBH Boston. That version can still be viewed online. 

Roy Behrens as interviewed on NOVA (1990)

 

A still frame from that program is reproduced here. It was filmed on an exceedingly hot afternoon on the grounds of the Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton OH. It was nearly impossible to complete the filming because (being an air force base) airplanes were constantly taking off. I was wearing a purple shirt and an especially appropriate necktie, the top half of which was a contrasting color, while the bottom half was the very same color as the shirt. 

When it aired nationally, I recall that my mother comically asked, “Who cut off your tie?” Another funny consequence is that the next day after its national broadcast, I received phone calls at the AAC, from former students in Wisconsin and Iowa, saying that they had watched the program, not knowing that I was included. One person told me that, “as the program started, I said to myself, ‘This is something that Roy Behrens would really enjoy”—and then, suddenly, I appeared on screen. Believe me, I no longer look like this.

PRINT magazine article on camouflage

Around the same time I received a call from the managing editor at PRINT in New York, the leading graphic design newstand magazine in the US. Would I be willing to prepare a major article on camouflage in relation to art and design? The resulting article was called Blend and Dazzle: The Art of Camouflage (January / February 1991). In no time, that then led to being appointed a Contributing Editor at PRINT, which I enjoyed tremendously for at least a dozen years or more.

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

from art to camouflage to the demolition of his home

Walter K. Pleuthner at age 82

Walter Pleuthner's WWI ship camouflage scheme

When Walter Karl Pleuthner registered for the draft in White Plains NY on September 12, 1918, he was officially listed—and signed the verification—as Walter Charles Pleuthner. That’s odd. Elsewhere, I’ve seen him listed as Walter Carl Pleuthner. There is no reason to assume that these were different people, because his birthdate is cited correctly as January 24, 1885. He was 33 years old at the time of his draft registration, and was self-employed as an artist and architect, living on Scarsdale Avenue, in Scarsdale NY.

Pleuthner was born in Buffalo NY. When as young as five years old, he began to take art lessons at what is now the Buffalo AKG Art Museum. His watercolors were first exhibited in New York City in 1903. Three years later he moved to New York, where he worked in his uncle’s law firm, while taking art courses at the Art Students League and the Academy of Design. Among the instructors he studied with were Frank DuMond and F. Luis Mora. When the Armory Show (the infamous International Exhibition of Modern Art) took place in New York in 1913, he was the youngest artist to have his work included.

Later, as an architect, he was primarily known for designing homes for wealthy clients. In 1909, he married Clara Riopel Von Bott, a concert singer, and designed a spacious stately Tudor home for them in Scarsdale. It was of sufficient distinction that his full color painting of the property’s entrance gate, with a view of the home in the background, was featured on the cover of a 1909 issue of American Homes and Gardens magazine. In the magazine’s interior pages was a full page feature on the home, with exterior photographs, floor plans, and marginal notes.

Magazine Cover / Walter Pleuther / 1909

Magazine interior featuring Pleuthner home / 1909

Pleuthner is listed as having been a member of the Society of Independent Artists, as well as of a New York group called American Camouflage, organized by Barry Faulkner and Sherry Edmundson Fry (for the purpose of becoming proficient at army camouflage) in anticipation of the US declaration of war in 1917.

At some point, as a civilian, he also became involved in ship camouflage. We know this because there is a photograph of a painted wooden ship silhouette, credited to him, that was published in March 1918 (in black and white only) as part of a lengthy research report by the Submarine Defense Association. After his scheme was tested by camouflage researchers at Eastman Kodak Laboratories in Rochester NY, his camouflage proposal was not selected for actual use.

Pleuthner’s wife died from a heart ailment in 1957. He lived for thirteen additional years. His newspaper obituary reads: “His techniques ranged from American impressionism to the unusual use of found objects. He wrote humorous anecdotes and philosophical essays. An architect by profession, he created many of the Gothic and Tudor style homes in Scarsdale and neighboring towns.” He died on December 2, 1970.

The Pleuthners had no children. After his wife’s death, he continued to live alone in their large residence in Scarsdale (although it isn’t entirely clear if this was the original house from 1909, or perhaps a later equivalent from 1920). What is certain is that he had difficulty in maintaining the house. In 1963, it caught on fire, but was not structurally damaged. Soon after, it caught on fire on two other occasions, followed by vandalism and thefts. Concerns were increasingly voiced by area residents, fire safety officials and the village board. Some people urged that the house be condemned and dismantled “as a danger.” This debate provoked a longtime Pleuthner friend and former neighbor to publish an objection in the Scarsdale Inquirer on November 22, 1967.

“We all know Walter’s eccentricities,” the letter to the editor said, “and it is easy to criticize them. With less formal education than some, Walter, through his own efforts, became an excellent architect. He built expensive and admirable houses as far away as Pennsylvania and several in Westchester County…”

The request to raze the Pluethner’s home should be denied, the writer urged. “Walter has suffered several serious misfortunes and since Mrs. Pleuthner’s death, he has mostly lived alone with his paintings and sculpture. His house has suffered damage from fires but appears structurally sound. He is now an old man.”

One cannot help but wonder why Pleuthner was regarded as “eccentric,” even among his defenders and friends. One early indication may be a 1941 news article titled “Tipsy House” in the American Builder magazine. 

Tipsy House: No hurricane; just a bad spill

 

Pleuthner ran into unforessen difficulties, the article reported, “with a model house he bought, cut into two sections and tried to move to another site. After a lot of figuring, he started out at dawn one morning with the first section on a big trailer. Things went all right until they rounded a sharp curve on a hill. At that point the house got tipsy, rolled off the trailer and landed on its side. The house wasn’t damaged, but it got Architect Pleuthner into all sorts of trouble with various people, including the Traffic Department, who objected to having a main highway blocked. Thousands of people who had inspected the house [earlier] when it was known as the ‘Home for Better Living,’ sponsored by Westchester Lighting Company, were intrigued by the sight ot the house, complete with shutters, slate roof and equipment, laying on its side by the road, where it stayed for several days.”

But the straw that eventually broke the authorities’ back was the increasingly disheveled state of his large self-built Tudor home. At the time he built the house, we are told in an article in Progressive Architecture magazine, it “was no more pixyish than many another in the high Eclectic period, and was distinguished only by having true half-timber construction, a massive braced frame with brick nogging. Loving handmade things and solid workmanship, he had the house put together by craftsmen who used a minimal amount of millwork and ready-sawn lumber. One of the timbers in the living room is a heavy stick from the privateer Hornet of War of 1812 fame. Originally, the house reflected in a conventional way Pleuthner’s triple artistic role as architect, painter…and sculptor, as fragments of old ironwork and woodwork and paintings accumulated on the walls. The great living room was the rehearsal room of the Wayside Players, an amateur group that included Robert Benchley, Dorothy Parker, and the cartoonist Rollin Kirby. At some point, the cultured clutter to be expected in an artist’s house passed over into whimsy, and Pleuthner decided to work on the walls, ceilings, floors, and furnishings of the various interiors. The kitchen at one period was transformed into an Italian garden. Floorboards were painted to imitate polychromed tiles. Other floors were carved out and inlaid with mosaic. A bathroom scale had the outlines of two feet painted on the platform, while the dial became a screaming baby face. Unpleasant book bindings were painted white, with code words daubed on the spines in red. An automobile hood became a canopy over the entrance to a summer house. And more and more odds and ends were added inside and out. In 1963, the house caught fire, but its substantial construction saved it. …the house is now in sad shape. The authorities claim that it is unsafe, and want to tear it down, but Pleuthner is confident that he can restore it. This winter, the house was leaky, drafty, and uninhabitable, but Pleuthner is already experimenting with the textural effects created on the floor by the latest fire.”

Pleuthner home interior in 1968

 

When that article appeared in 1968, Walter Pleuthner was 82 years old. His home was condemned and soon after demolished near the end of that year. When he died two years later, he was listed as residing at a nursing home in White Plains.

SOURCES

• Cover and “A Handmade House, Walter Pleuthner, Architect,” in American Homes and Gardens. Vol IV No 6, June 1909, p. 78.
• “Tipsy House” in American Builder 1941-09: Vol 63 Issue 9, p. 87.
• Letters to the Editor, Harold A. Herriet, “Defends Walter Pleuthner” in Scarsdale Inquirer, Vol XLIV No 47, November 22, 1967.
• “Dwellings: The Rationales in their Design” in Progressive Architecture, May 1968.
• “Walter K. Pleuthner” [obituary], in Scarsdale Inquirer. Vol 52 No 49, December 10, 1970.

Lewis W. Rubenstein / WWII US Navy ship camoufleur

Everett L. Warner (front center), with WWII ship camoufleurs

In 1993, Stephen Polcari, Director of the Archives of American Art, conducted a tape-recorded interview with American artists Lewis W. Rubenstein and Erica Beckh Rubenstein, in which Lewis Rubenstein spoke about various aspects of his artistic life, including his camouflage service during World War II.

Among the things that Rubenstein recalled were his associations with scientist Edwin Land, inventor of the Polaroid camera, with whom he had been college friends at Harvard, and a government official named Richard C. Morrison, who had also been at Harvard and was in charge of a camouflage research project in Boston, which involved the development of a camouflage paint (invented by Samuel Cabot) called “haze paint.” He also worked with Land on research that pertained to underwater vision in relation to submarines.

Rubenstein was originally from Buffalo NY. After graduating fom Harvard in 1930, he received a fellowship to study in Europe. When he returned, he taught the Boston Museum School and the University of Buffalo, then joined the faculty at Vassar College. A newsletter from that school announced in early 1942 that Rubenstein had taken leave from teaching “for the duration of the war,” in order to contribute to US Navy camouflage.

In his interview for the Archives of American Art, he shared specific information about his wartime service, albeit the interview transcript is replete with phonetic name spelling mistakes. “…I went into the navy in ship camouflage…” he states, “…[where] I worked with Charles Benninger [sic, Charles Bittinger]…”

He continues: “[Dazzle] was one kind of [ship camouflage], and the other kind was just low visibility, and I did both. I was in that camouflage unit during the war. There were a number of artists in that too. [Bittinger]  was an artist and his half-brother was a member of the National Academy—his half-brother was John Maron [sic, John Marin]. He once invited me to lunch with [Marin]. And Edward Warner [sic, Everett Longley Warner], who was a painter, was the other half of that. Eliot O’Hara was in the group, [as was] Bennett Buck, [and] a number of artists.”

The remaining mention of camouflage in the interview is filled with mistakes, and more confusing than informative. But, just for the record, it goes like this:

Polcari: Yeah, I remember—Ellsworth Kelly was in the camouflage unit.

Lewis Rubenstein: He wasn’t in that one.

Polcari: No, he wasn’t in that one.

Erica Rubenstein: Maybe he was in army camouflage.

Polcari: Yeah, army camouflage, that’s right. Rourkie [sic, Arshile Gorky] taught camouflage—[Gorky] taught camouflage in New York City.

Rubenstein: (Laughs.) He made the best use of it, I think.

Polcari: Yes, he did. Well, that’s true, that he used it in his style. He used it in his style.

Reproduced above is a photograph that was given to me by one of the ship camoufleurs who served in the same unit as Rubenstein. It was given to me by Robert R. Hays, who is on the far right in the photograph. He was one of those who served under Everett L. Warner, who is shown holding the ship model at the front center. I’ve identified the other four members of Warner’s team who are standing around him. They are (from left to right) H. Bennett Buck, Sheffield Kagy, William Walters, and Arthur Conrad (father of artists Daniel Conrad and Tony Conrad). The only person whom I haven’t identified is the man in the very back at the extreme left. I now wonder if that might be Lewis Rubenstein, but I can’t confirm it. As shown by a later photograph of Rubenstein (at the bottom of this post) it might well be him.

Lewis W. Rubenstein / ship camoufleur

ONLINE VIDEO TALKS

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 camouflage artist / taxidermist Louis Paul Jonas

Taxidermy Hall of Fame

It certainly comes as no surprise that a person who practices taxidermy would also be interested in the appearance of animals, in protective coloration, mimicry, and camouflage. Over the years, I’ve run across any number of naturalists, museum exhibit designers, ornithologists, and wildlife artists, who, at one time or another, have contributed to the study of camouflage in nature. Some have even served during wartime as camouflage consultants.

Shown above is a photograph of the well-known museum display of a group of African elephants in the Akeley Hall of the American Museum of Natural History. It was completed by a famous naturalist, taxidermist and sculptor named Carl Akeley, who collaborated on it with one of his prominent students, the sculptor and museum exhibit designer Louis Paul Jonas (1894-1971). Born in Budapest, Hungary, Jonas initially worked with his two older brothers, who owned a taxidermy studio in Denver (eventually there were five brothers in the firm). After moving to New York, he established his own studio, and created admired exhibits in more than 50 museums throughout the world.

I want to focus on Louis Paul Jonas because I hadn’t realized that, during World War I, he served in the US Army’s Camouflage Corps. I learned this only recently from a news article titled MONSTER MAKER, so-titled because he had been commissioned by the Sinclair Oil Company to build full-size fiberglas models of dinosaurs for the New York World’s Fair.

In that article (published in the Barrytown Explorer, Barrytown NY, on October 1, 1963, p. 4), it states that Jonas bought a 120-acre farm near Churchtown NY “and gradually made over the barns and stables into studios, and built up a staff from among his Columbia County neighbors. Now he has a staff of 16 experts, all trained by himself. One he found in a Hudson shirt factory, a young Italian who had been a mold maker in a ceramics works back home; several were members of an Adult Education class in sculpture conducted by Jonas in connection with the Hudson school system—bricklayers, housewives, and factory workers among them; three came to him via the GI Training Program, and the rest are members of his own family, including his ‘key man,’ Louis Paul Jonas Jr.” An extraordinary person obviously.

disrupting Picasso and Man Ray on the French Riviera

Speaking of shadow disruption (an addendum to the previous post), I must also recommend a fascinating documentary video that is available to watch free on the Tubi streaming video site. 

Above is a still frame from the video in which Picasso, Man Ray and their friends are shown seated beneath a tree, the shadows of which are disrupting their figures. 

The 54-minute film is called On the French Riviera with Man Ray and Picasso, and the online link is here.

chain link fence shadows as disruptive camouflage

I am tempted to call it “chain link fence camouflage” since it occurs so frequently on the tennis court on a sunny day. 

A ball is hit over the chain link fence, and in searching for it in the grass (a green ball especially) it may be difficult to see because its shape is broken up by the shadow of the fence.

It has had other names as well: “umbrella camouflage,” “garnished fish net camouflage,” “shadow disruption” and so on.

It is nothing new, and can easily be found in art history, especially in photography and in impressionist painting. But it seems that it wasn’t officially and commonly practiced until World War I. It’s use of course is now widepread.

Shown above is the cover of a special issue of Art News magazine (November 1-14, 1942), which included several articles on wartime uses of camouflage. The photograph on the cover is an optimal example of shadow disruption.

We’ve blogged about in the past, as in this post from 2016. And there is an interesting account of its use by Ellsworth Kelly (who was a wartime camoufleur) in E.C. Goossen’s book about his life and work.

Edward Wadsworth / camouflage UK postage stamp

Until recently I hadn’t realized that the UK had at one time (not sure when) issued a postage stamp that featured a famous woodcut of a WWI dazzle-camouflaged ship by British Vorticist artist Edward Wadsworth (1889-1949).

During the war, Wadsworth actually served as a dock supervisor, meaning that he directed teams of workers who painted enormous ship camouflage schemes onto the full-sized ships in the harbors.

He was a fascinating person in many regards, not just for his involvement in camouflage. He created a number of woodcuts that demonstrate the visual effect of high contrast disruptive patterns, as well as a famous large format painting on the same subject. We’ve focused on various aspects of his life and artistic achievements in earlier postings on this blog.

Portrait photograph of Edward Wadsworth

ONLINE VIDEO TALKS

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

engaged by the government to design ship camouflage

Hobart (left) and Spencer Nichols

We have known about an American artist named Spencer Baird Nichols (1875-1950) for some time, and we earlier blogged about the fact that he and his older brother, named Henry Hobart Nichols Jr. (usually known as Hobart Nichols) (1869-1962), also an artist, both served during World War I as civilian ship camouflage artists. We know this because they are listed as being among the artists who were affiliated with the Marine Camoufleurs of the US Shipping Board, Second District, a section that was headed by William Andrew MacKay. It is also mentioned in various news articles from that time period. Unfortunately, there is little if any mention of their camouflage contributions in other online articles, including Wikipedia.

When we blogged about them earlier, we published a newspaper item from 1919, which reported that Hobart Nichols had given a talk about wartime ship camouflage at the Nondescript Club in Bronxville NY.

Since then, two additional factors have come to light: 

One is an article in the Evening Star (Washington DC) from July 23, 1898, which reveals that Spencer Nichols had left Washington for St Louis, “to join the United States engineer corps in camp there.” He has done this, as the article states, “in the capacity of an artist, and his regular work will be of a kind that is not uncongenial to him, and it will afford him at the same time an excellent chance to gather material that may prove of the greatest value to him later on.” It is not clear from the article if his service was connected to the Spanish-American war, which had broken out in April of the same year.

The other item is a more detailed article in the Bronxville Review on March 4, 1933, p. 19, for which the headline reads: SPENCER NICHOLS, NOW TEACHING HERE, WAS GOVERNMENT ARTIST DURING WAR. The article goes on to say—

A native of Washington DC, where he studied with Howard Helmick at the Art Students League, Mr. Nichols first came to New York as the associate of the late Louis Tifanny. For fifteen years, he executed Commissions for stained glass windows in important churches and other publc buildings and designed decorations for homes and institutions. During the war Mr. Nichols was engaged by the government to design camouflage for transports: his technical knowledge of color and design was applied to giving a ship the appearance of being out of alignment with its true course—a responsible and difficult task for the wartime artist.

like a wartime camouflaged ship with cartoons added

WOMAN PLANS UGLIEST HOME in Journal News, July 10, 1933, p. 2—

[A woman from Glen Ridge NJ] who set out a year ago to make her house the ugliest in the world announced today she was far from satisfied and appealed to the Famous Artists of America to advise her on a color scheme that will make the motley structure shriek.

The present color scheme—pink, blue, green and purple in the manner of camouflage on a wartime ship, interspersed with huge cartoons—is bad enough, according to some residents. But [the woman] is determined to make the $30,000 residence such an eyesore to the community that the Bourough Council will implore her to lease it for a business development.

The strange feud started when the Council decided the house was in a residental zone. [The woman] thought she should be permitted to sell it for a business site. From the impasse the house sprouted red flannel underwear from the windows and all the colors of the rainbow oddly mingled on its sides. A clothesline appeared across the front yard and on it waved the underwear of the 1890’s.

In addition, [the woman] has placed signs about the front yard, expressing her opinion regarding the borough council and on one side of the house is a row of four hogs heads. It happens that the borough council has four members.

Charles Le Brun, Resemblances