an abstracted equivalent of an animal's typical haunts

Roy R. Behrens, Seeing through Camouflage: Abbott Thayer, Background-Picturing and the Use of Cutout Silhouettes, in Leonardo, Vol 51, No 1, pp. 4046, 2018, pp. 41-46—

In collaboration with his son, artist and naturalist Gerald Handerson Thayer, at some point Abbott Handerson Thayer began to espouse a new kind of camouflage called background-picturing. With that concept, he contended that the appearance of animals had evolved toward being well suited for their customary habitat.

As he put it, the patterns on their bodies are "a picture of such background as would be seen through it if it were transparent."

But animals are rarely immobile. They move from one setting to another, and Thayer was not suggesting that an animal's pattern is a literal pictorial image of a single background. That would be counterproductive. Instead, he reasoned, it is an average of a range of typical settings, a generic abstracted equivalent of the appearance(s) of the animal's usual haunts. In Thayer's words, the patterns found on animals are "a sort of compound picture of their normal backgrounds—a picture seemingly made up by the averaging of innumerable landscapes.”…[more]

Chateau Camouflage / unusual tent for US army officer

CHATEAU CAMOUFLAGE: Army Home of Capt. C.J. Dieges Attracts Favorable Comment in The Jewelers' Circular Weekly (January 9, 1918)—

Capt. Charles J. Dieges, of Dieges & Clust, 15 John St., New York, while visiting his many friends last week on a 10 days' furlough, as noted in The Jewelers' Circular, showed the picture of his tent, illustrated herewith, in which he is making his home until he goes "Over There." In the picture [not the one shown in this post] Captain Dieges is shown outside of his regulation United States Officers' tent, which is named the "Chateau Camouflage," in the company of his son, Robert Dieges, who has served with the United States Army for over nine years and now has the rank of second lieutenant. In civil life, Lieut. Robert Dieges is the assistant foreman in the manufacturing plant of Dieges & Clust. During his nine years of service in the army he has proven himself an expert on trenches, dugouts and general mining. Some of his bomb-proof shelters have been 40 feet underground. Lieutenant Dieges has won his promotion through his own hard work.

When Captain Dieges was asked for a few words describing the tent, he said: "When I arrived at Camp Wadsworth, Spartansburg, SC, with the old 22nd Regiment, New York, now the 102nd Engineers USA, we found that all of the units were preparing to make themselves as comfortable as possible. The units were constructing all styles of bungalow shacks. The photograph represents the regulation United States Army Officers' tent. At one time we had a 10-inch snowfall, and at times, especially at night, it has been very cold. As engineers we must use all material found at hand to carry out our work. As a designer of jewelry, I decided to get up something out of the general run. I made a small sketch of the 'camouflage' tent, which was to be my home, and had the young man on the right, who is an architect in civil life, paint the same to represent just what the name designated, 'camouflage.' The front, rear and sides are constructed of rough pine, utilizing the tent for the roof and partly covering the sides. It has been commented upon most favorably as one of the most unique 'comfies' in camp. The inside is furnished with a cot, small table and chair and the army stove with a miniature fireplace. While there are plenty of cracks and openings for fresh air, at the same time it is very comfortable.

Just out / new version of online film on Gertrude Stein

New and improved version of this video talk is now free online at <https://youtu.be/gPD-IIW_1yA>. Share with anyone interested in Modernism, Iowa, American expatriates, the Lost Generation, literature, Gertrude Stein, Picasso, World War I, Red Cross, Americans in Paris, architecture, painting, Le Corbusier, French Academy, humor, Majorca, Spain, Rome, Independence Iowa—and camouflage.

Twenty years ago I flat-out wouldn't have believed you

One of the benefits of being a graphic designer is that it affords opportunities to provide pro bono solutions for causes that one is in sympathy with. During 45 years of teaching, it was especially gratifying to arrange for students to take on pro bono design community opportunities, in which they could then produce exemplary solutions, to enrich their portfolios. Having retired, I myself don't have a professional need to create designs for community causes, and yet I continue to do it, simply because of the satisfaction of producing things of quality in support of worthy causes.

A couple of years ago, for example, I took on the problem of designing eight large format panels for a traveling exhibition (including a banner and the shipping container) about the life and work of an Iowa-born novelist and short story writer named Ruth Suckow. Through the efforts of Iowa scholar Barbara Lounsberry (President of the Ruth Suckow Memorial Association), the exhibit has had enormous success, resulting in its installation at numerous libraries, history centers and other Iowa venues. It is currently on view at the German American Heritage Museum (Davenport IA), as shown above in a view of the installation space.

More recently, I agreed to design a full-color folded brochure for the Dysart Historical Society in Dysart IA. Screen shots of the unfolded outside and inside page layouts are reproduced below. It is a pleasure to take these on, but of course they are also a source of frustration at times, since one has to comply with the client's intentions for the function of the finished design (its content), while producing a visual solution (its form) that is beautifully and effectively made—not merely "slop" that pays the rent.

As Bob Dylan famously said, "the times they are a-changing." A daunting profusion of ugly tattoos (mindless graffiti on youthful architectural skin) are ruining otherwise beautiful forms—of which the deaths of democracy and the rule of law are easily the most frightening. I thought of that just recently as I once again watched one of the best designed films of our era, No Country for Old Men (2007). Here is the salient passage:

"You know, if you'd have told me 20 years ago I'd see children walking the streets of our Texas towns with green hair and bones in their noses, I just flat-out wouldn't have believed you."

Del Ames, Ballet Mécanique & WWI ship camouflage

online video link

In 2021, I produced a three-part video about the life of Adelbert Ames Jr. (aka Adelbert Ames II), the American artist, psychologist and optical physiologist who became well known (in the 1940s and 50s) for having devised the Ames Demonstrations in perceptual psychology. That trilogy has been available on my YouTube channel (@camoupedia) for the past five years.

Regrettably, I've never been happy with the third video in that series. The voice-over narration was awful. Finally, after years of wanting to replace it, I've now been able to reconstruct that third segment. The new version is greatly improved, and I have posted it online (the link is above), although it has now been retitled as Adelbert Ames and Anamorphosis / New Version / Part 3. It is entirely free to watch and to share with others.

Ames served in the US Army Signal Corps, and was involved in research that pertained to optics and vision. As far as I know, he did not contribute directly to the development of wartime camouflage, but as this video explains, he did have some connection to camouflage, in part because an artist / friend (who designed frames for Ames' paintings) named Hermann Dudley Murphy was an inspector of ship camouflage for the US Shipping Board.

Hermann Dudley Murphy

Another surprising link is this: Murphy's son was Dudley Murphy, a young Hollywood filmmaker, and an expert on lenses and cameras, who (at his father's suggestion) was hired as Ames' technical assistant at Dartmouth College during the summer of 1921. 

The younger Murphy then moved on to Europe. In the UK, he befriended the poet Ezra Pound and the Vorticist photographer Alvin Langdon Colburn. In France, he met the Surrealist artist Man Ray and the French painter Fernand Léger. It was Murphy and Léger (not just Léger, as if often mistakenly claimed) who made the famous experimental film called Ballet Mécanique. 

This video tells the story of that, and ruminates about the link between that film and Ames' later experiments in vision. It's really quite interesting.

Ames distorted room