celebrated Hollywood art director was US camoufleur

To my surprise, I have known about Richard Day for years. I simply hadn’t realized that a camoufleur named Richard Day was the same person whom I was aware of for other reasons. As a graphic designer, I have long been interested in the book designs of Merle Armitage, and I knew that one of the books he designed was The Lithographs of Richard Day. Foreword by Carl Zigrosser. New York: E. Weyhe, 1932. While I have sometimes collected Armitage books, I’ve never owned this particular one (it’s not among his finest designs), and in truth I haven’t had much interest in Richard Day’s lithographs (or at least the ones in this volume).

But my interest has been reenlivened—for other reasons. This same Richard Day, as it turns out, was one of Hollywood’s most famous art directors. He was a Canadian whose full name was Richard Welsted Day (1896-1972). He didn’t settle in the US until c1918. Prior to that, he served in World War I as a captain in the Canadian Expeditionary Force, which may or may not have included experience with camouflage.

Following the war, having worked as a commercial artist in Victoria BC, he moved to Hollywood, in the hope that he might find work in the motion picture industry. By good fortune, he apprenticed with Eric von Stroheim, worked as a scene painter, and was soon appointed art director of the film Foolish Wives. As his career progressed, he moved on to other opportunites as a Supervising Art Director. In addition to von Stroheim, he also worked with Tod Browning, Samuel Goldwyn, and Elia Kazan.

Day’s work on hundreds of Hollywood films resulted in his nomination for forty Academy Awards, as well as earning Oscars for Dark Angel, How Green Was My Valley, This Above All, My Gal Sal, A Streetcar Named Desire, On the Waterfront, and Dodsworth. By the mid-1930s, as a motion picture art director, he was the highest-paid in Hollywood.

When the US joined the Allies in WWII, Day became an American citizen and joined the US Marine Corps, during which he specialized in “camouflage designs and relief mapping techniques.” His final film, produced in 1970, was Tora! Tora! Tora!, which included his reenactment of the attack on Pearl Harbor, which (according to the New York Times) cost the film’s producers “more money than the Japanese had [spent] on the original attack in 1941.”

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

WWI Armenian-American camoufleurs in US Army

WWI American poster

Back in 2013, I first learned about an Armenian-born American artist named Nishan G. Toor (born Nishan G. Tooroonjian), who had served as a camouflage artist during World War I. I had long been aware of the camouflage involvement of another Armenian artist, the famous American painter, Arshile Gorky, who taught camouflage at Grand Central Art School in New York during WWII, until “visited” by the FBI.

More recently I’ve found out about a third Armenian artist, named Katchador Boroian (1889-1989), who contributed to camouflage during WWI. Born in Chunkoosh, Armenia, Borolan emigrated to the US in 1912, and settled in Chicago, where he studied at the Art Institute of Chicago. During those years, he supported himself as a commercial artist, which, among other projects, included his completion of a mural for the Chicago Daily News building.

In June 1917, he registered for the draft in Chicago. He was soon after inducted into the US Army where, according to various sources, he “painted helmets and artillery for camouflage.”

He moved to Los Angeles after the war, and lived there for the rest of his life, initially in Yettem, then in Dinuba, and finally in Fresno. Earlier, he had taught himself needlepoint, which would prove invaluable when, disabled by glaucoma in the 1940s, he could no longer use standard art materials. Twenty-five years later, he discovered that he could resume his earlier work if he used needlepoint, which he continued to do for the rest of his life.

At the close of his life, at age 99, Boroian was blind in one eye, but continued to work at a card table in his retirement quarters at the California Armenian Home in Fresno.

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

Luther E. DeJoiner / WWI American ship camoufleur

Luther E. DeJoiner

The number and variety of artists, designers, illustrators, stage designers, and architects who served as camouflage experts in both World Wars continues to astonish me.

Among the most recent is an American painter named Luther Evans DeJoiner (1885-1955). Born in Switzer KY, he was influenced by his father, a portrait painter and photographer named Oscar D. DeJoiner (1860-1924). Around the time of Luther’s birth, the family moved from Kentucky to Chattanooga TN (where his father gave art lessons in his studio), then to St Louis MO before finally settling in Alameda CA.

In California, Luther DeJoiner studied at the Mark Hopkins Institute (now the San Francisco Art Institute), and wth Arthur Hill Gilbert in Monterey. As a landscape painter, among his primary interests was the study of nature, and he is frequently cited as a naturalist as well as a painter. He lived in Santa Cruz for most of his adult life, but he traveled thoughout the country with his wife, Emily DeJoiner, in search of subject settings, with a particular interest in redwoods.

When he registered for the draft in June 1917, he described himself as a self-employed painter. During World War I, he served as a ship camoufleur designer, for which he was stationed at Mare Island during 1917-18.

In his final years, he made an attempt to move beyond landscape painting, by experimenting with semi-abstract, non-objective compositions. His final exhibition was held in September 1954, several months before he died. Long preoccupied with fishing, he died unexpectedly of a heart attack, on Christmas day, while fishing on the San Lorenzo River near Santa Cruz.

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