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

Marcel Breuer / smuggling banknotes out of Germany

Bauhaus, Gestalt and Problem Solving

Bauhaus, Gestalt and Problem Solving: Thinking Outside the Box , a recent online video talk, includes an old familiar joke about a factory worker who left work each day with a wheelbarrow full of packing peanuts. The joke is a prime example of a switch of attention (as in, for example, misdirection in magic acts). The worker was suspected of smuggling factory components, but nothing was found. In the end it was determined that he was stealing wheelbarrows. I was reminded of this when I ran across the story of how Bauhaus furniture designer and architect Marcel Breuer succeeded in smuggling banknotes through customs when he left Germany for London. 

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Jack Pritchard, View from a Long Chair (London : Routledge & Kagan Paul, 1984), p.111—

Carola Giedion [wife of Sigfried Giedion] and Sybil Moholy [wife of Laszlo Moholy-Nagy] were sharing a flat [in London] for a while, and Sybil had received a book from [Marcel] Breuer which , when opened, was found to be [Adolf Hitler’s famous book] Mein Kampf. It was worse than a poor joke, she and Carola were furious and threw it away wtth the rubbish. Breuer arrived soon after, apparently happy at being away from Nazi Germany, only to find two furious dames attacking him wtth no mercy. When he could get a word in he explained that, in order to get some of his money through German Customs, he thought it would be a bright idea to interleave their leader’s great book with banknotes. They would surely not examine it with any great care. There was immediate pandemonium, all rushed down, hoping the rubbish had not yet been taken away. When they found the book, all was forgiven.

Camouflage used as film theatre entrance advertising

Theatre entrance for The Geezer of Berlin (1918), NYC

In a wartime issue of Motography (November 10, 1917, p. 975), a brief article appeared in which it was asserted by a Hollywood advertising executive that “There is absolutely no excuse…for making motion picture posters deceptive.” In the article, titled Camouflage Has No Place in Poster Making, the executive goes on to say that ”Camouflage has its uses but it does not lend itself to the theatre lobby.”

Almost a year later, this was contradicted by a full-page article in Motion Picture News (October 5, 1918, p. 2189) titled Lobby Display Gets Laughs and Pulls in Crowds to See “The Geezer of Berlin.” It describes a successful advertising ploy devised M. Kashin, theatre manager of The Broadway Theatre in New York.

In an effort to increase attendance at the showing of a propaganda film (the “geezer” in the title, of course, is Kaiser Wilhelm II), Kashin transformed the theatre entrance, as well as the inside lobby, by installing "dazzle camouflage" designs, cartoons, and humorous posters.

The “vivid colors” of the “real camouflage” on the facade, the article states, “are enough to stop anyone in their tracks,” and in turn to lead the audience to a cut-out of “Der Geezer,” as well as satirical posters about “The Clown Prince,” “Gott of Germany,” “Hindebug,” and “Turpentine.”

Reproduced above is a photograph of Kashin’s design for the entrance. In an article published elsewhere (titled Inexpensive Lobby Displays), Kashin discussed his methods for devising this and other advertising novelties. He wrote: “I have found that the lobby display, worked out to its finest detail, will bring more results than any other form of advertising…”

Huge phonograph is camouflaged delivery car

NEW METHOD FOR DELIVERY Novel Delivery Car Is Built Like Phonograph By R.W. Whiteside in San Bernardino News Vol 45 No 77, April 1, 1918, p. 5—

When a red buzz wagon carrying a huge “phonograph” on the rear end drew up in front of the home of a certain well-known citizen today, said citizen nearly died of heart failure. Also, he locked his checkbook in the safe before he dashed wildly to the door.

“Say,” he shouted to R.W. Whiteside, the driver, “that isn’t the phonograph I bought from you. What do you think I am, a millionaire?”

“Be calm, ladies and gentlemen,” whispered the music man; whereupon he gently unlocked a concealed door in the “phonograph” and drew forth from the open portals a “regular” machine.

“I just deliver them in this other one,” he said.

The camouflage idea was evolved by Whiteside as an advertising stunt. A huge imitation phonograph has been constructed on the rear end of the machine and is used as a delivery compartment for phonographs sold by the Whiteside Music Company on Fourth Street.

Camouflaged Bathing Suit | A Swimming Idea WWI

IT’S HERE ON THE BEACHES AT LAST—THE CAMOUFLAGED BATHING SUIT in Boston Sunday Post, August 18, 1918—

Have you seen it? What does it look like? Is it really invisible? How perfectly absurd!

But yet it’s a fact.

We’ve seen camouflaged ships and camouflaged tanks, and camouflage eats…but it took Leonore Bates at Atlantic City to develop the latest camouflage hit.

It is the camouflaged bathing suit. Hereafter when any of the beach policemen get after any girl who seems to have on not quite the regulation costume, they are more than half apt to be met with the reply:

“Why, of course, this is a ‘proper suit.’ Can’t you see, it’s camouflaged.”

It’s a great thing, the camouflage bathing suit, from many standpoints. In the first place, a person wearing one isn’t near so apt to be submarined by those German U-boats who have taken up their quarters on the coast.

Then again they are ideal for the naval spy, for he can sneak up right on top of a submarine and he can attach his depth bomb or anything else which he brought in his pocket with him without any fear of detection and it may be that through the medium of the camouflage bathing suit we may stop this sort of warfare. And how cheaply it can be done.

What do they look like?

The appearance of some of the milder designs is midway between a design cut from a crazy quilt and a futurist painting of the inferno.

Vivid reds, greens, blues and yellows, etc, mixed in a wavy medley of ghastly pale colors, in utter disregard to color harmony, etc., seems to be the general rule, but camouflage it is called, so why say more.

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DULL DAYS ON SANDS in The Stars and Stripes (France), Friday, July 19, 1918, p. 1—

America, July 18—A lady police corps on the job at Coney Island gives stern moral instruction to lady bathers who think that man wants but little here below or above either.

They spend their time separating many warming embracing couples and altogether spoil the whole day for ardent sea bathers.

A lady camouflage corps has camouflaged the wooden battleship Recruit, in Union Square, New York City, in black, white, pink, green and blue.

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CAMOUFLAGE BATHING SUIT IS LATEST STYLE in Boston Post, May 7, 1919, p. 17—

An art of war has survived to these times of peace. It is the art of camouflage which the summertime girl has made her own.  

Even the very bathing suit within which she promenades the sunny sands will not look quite what it is. Camouflaged bathing suits is to be the cry for 1919.

The hot wave brought a striking one to light. It is called the "Sunset" camouflage. This very new suit is black-figured on a white ground with an enormous red setting sun and rainbow colored rays in all directions. So this year the beach frequenters, already grown used to the unusual and the unexpected, may expect to see a hundred setting suns bobbing up and down at sea where once there was one.

More>>

Scandalous Camouflage Bathing Attire 1919

You may recall earlier posts that included photographs and news reports on scandalous dazzle-camouflaged bathing suits (see below) that began in the UK at the close of World War I, then spread to the US and elsewhere. We've now located an American newspaper cartoon on the same subject (reproduced above). Created by Walter R. Allman as part of his series called DOINGS OF THE DUFFS, it appeared on page 4 of The Palm Beach Post on August 20, 1919. It shows a woman dressed in the same kind of striped bathing suit that had been sighted on the beach.

 

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William Edward Ross, “America’s Pledge to Humanity’s Cause” in The National Magazine. Vol XLVII No 7 (June 1918), p. 326—

The sudden importance of everything attached to ships has resulted in many new devices for their protection, and perhaps no word coined during the present war has sprung into such instant popularity as the term “camouflage.” Born of necessity, its particular appeal to the need of the hour has rendered it extremely expressive. The general definition of “camouflage” is to deceive the enemy through some subterfuge which leads him to believe that what he sees is not what it is. It has proven one of the most valuable adjuncts to present war tactics, as applied to naval and merchant marine disguise. 

The artists assigned to the camouflage work have a well-appointed studio and theatre [which simulate] conditions that the ships will experience on the ocean as portrayed. It is their duty to devise ways and means, as well as do the actual work, to disguise these vessels in such a way that they will be almost indistinguishable.

Records received from the British Government indicate that camouflage is working even more successfully than was believed possible. A recent test was made when a camouflaged British ship was fired at with blank torpedoes, and the submarine captain insisted that he had made the best shots he had ever made, but the men on the camouflaged vessel hardly knew they were being fired at, the shots went so wide of the mark. On another instance, two vessels were passing each other, one camouflaged, the other au natural. One captain figured that their courses were going to meet. He blew his whistle to signal change of course. The first vessel paid no attention to his signals, and he began to notice that the thing was sliding sideways. They passed about a quarter of a mile apart, although the captain would have sworn the camouflaged ship was coming directly toward him. The entire system is simply a matter of physics and optical illusion. It is what the British call the “dazzle system,” and, when several duly camouflaged ships are passing by in Hampton Roads, it resembles nothing so much as a futurist painting—a conglomerate mass of phantom shapes. The use of camouflage and its value as a protective force furnishes an apt paraphrase on a prominent quotation, namely, “The hand which wields the paint brush saves the ship.”

 

Camouflage Fashion | Swimsuits, Stripes & Headgear

Dazzle-Painted Bathing Suit (1919) [colorized]

Above This is a young, fashionable sun bather at the beach at Margate in 1919, dressed in a scandalous dazzle-painted bathing suit. The fad was enormously popular—it went viral at the time—and widely covered in the press. We've talked about this in earlier posts, the only difference being that this is our colorized version of one of the news photos.

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Anon, "Camouflage Finds Use in Fashions" in The Coshocton Tribune (Coshocton OH) (April 15, 1920), p. 7—

LONDON—The artists who decorated our recently almost invisible ships and who hid the armies of the western front behind and under painted canvas and "ersatz" villages are out of a job.

Hence the Spring millinery styles.

The dazzle hat has arrived, and with it a game.

Says one fashion writer:

"If you see coming toward you a woman who in some unaccountable way seems to melt into a sort of rainbow mass above the shoulders, don't be alarmed; try to find her hat."

To the uninitiated the new Spring designs seem to be meaningless collections of colored stripes and zig-zags. Some are even more like forked lightning.

FDR In Camouflage | Cecil Calvert Beall

Portrait of FDR by Cecil Calvert Beall (c1933)

The American artist who produced this portrait of US President Franklin D. Roosevelt did not (to our knowledge) serve as a camouflage artist, but it certainly looks like he could have. It is a clever composite (chockful of delightful puns) devised c1933 (some say 1936) by magazine illustrator Cecil Calvert Beall (1892-1967). This is a black and white version of course, but the initial painting (as shown below) was in full-color. It was met with such widespread approval that the National Democratic Party used it in its next presidential campaign, assigning it the title of Find What Roosevelt Means to the US in This Picture.

Full-color versions of the same composite portrait

Then or sometime later, it was apparently revised for promotional use in connection with FDR's residence at Warm Springs GA, describing it as "The Little White House," and introducing images of Eleanor Roosevelt and the United Nations.

Beall was a native of Montana who had studied at the Art Students League in New York with George Bridgman. It doesn't seem that "visual puns" were his usual way of working (look up Arcimboldo for historical precedents), but we do know that he used the same technique in at least one other painting. As shown below, it appeared in a wartime poster for the US Army Recruiting Service (presumably for World War I, if the soldier's helmet is correct).

In psychology, composite puzzle pictures such as these are typically referred to as "embedded figures." For a discussion of how these have been used in art, architecture and design (as well as, literally, in camouflage), here is an online essay.

additional sources

Dazzle Camouflage Bathing Suits

Just when we thought we'd exhausted World War I photos and articles on dazzle-camouflage bathing suits, here are more. Above is a newspaper photo that appeared in the Free Lance (Wellington, New Zealand) Vol 19 No 996, on August 6, 1919, p. 18. The headline reads: DAZZLE BATHING SUITS THE LATEST VOGUE.

And then there's this from the front page of the Washington Herald, on Monday, June 2, 1919 (with no photo)—

HER BATHING SUIT IS GOOD, BUT NOT MUCH

Young Woman in Camouflage Outfit at Coney Island, Reverses Art as Practiced in War and Reveals—Oh, Boy!

New York, June 1—Camouflage, according to the general understanding, is intended to conceal; but the young lady who sprung a "camouflage" bathing suit at Coney Island this afternoon—providing that was her intention—failed to accomplish any such purpose.

It is doubtful if anything about the suit, or the young lady, escaped the attention of the several thousand persons on the beach. No two could be found who agreed on the details of the costume, but they all agreed beautifully regarding the details of the young lady. A woman's description of the effect would be highly technical, so here's one by a man:

Head—Bare.
Face—Slightly tinted.
Neck—Bare.
Arms—Bare.
Legs—Bare.
The rest—bathing suit:

The costume was made of something or other, and its principle colors were violet, indigo, blue, green, yellow, orange and red, with intermediate shades. It was a perfect fit.

Vaccination Camouflage and More Swimsuits

Have you a camouflage bathing suit? (1919)

Above, photographic images (digitally restored) from “HAVE YOU A ‘CAMOUFLAGE’ BATHING SUIT? It’s the Summer’s Newest Fad” in The Evening World Daily Magazine. May 31, 1919, p. 1.

…

Anon, “HER BATHING SUIT IS GOOD, BUT NOT MUCH: Young Woman in Camouflage Outfit at Coney Island, Reverses Art as Practiced in War and Reveals—Oh, Boy!” in The Washington Herald, June 2, 1919, p. 1—
 

Camouflage, according to the general understanding, is intended to conceal, but the young lady who sprung a “camouflage” bathing suit at Coney Island this afternoon—providing that was her intention—failed to accomplish any such purpose.

It is doubtful if anything about the suit, or the young lady, escaped the attention of the several thousand persons on the beach. No two could be found who agreed on the details of the costume, but they all agreed beautifully regarding the details of the young lady. A woman’s description of the effect would be highly technical, so here’s one by a man—

Head—Bare.
Face—Slightly tanned.
Neck—Bare.
Arms—Bare.
Legs—Bare.
The rest—bathing suit.

The costume was made of something or other, and its principal colors were violet, indigo, blue, green, yellow, orange and read, with intermediate shades. It was a perfect fit.

Above Some of the first vaccinations for the most dreaded contagious diseases (diptheria, tuberculosis, scarlet fever, and whooping cough) were introduced shortly after World War I. Sometimes they left substantial scars. Shown here is a full-page article on “Beauty’s Latest Skin Game” which revealed the latest clever means of “vaccination camouflage.” From The Morning Tulsa (OK) Daily World. December 17, 1922.

Day-Glo Camouflage

From Paola Antonelli, Safe: Design Takes on Risk (NY: Museum of Modern Art, 2005), p. 42—

In 2004 a group protesting against fox hunting evaded security and broke into the hallowed corridors of the British House of Commons' debating chamber. They did so wearing fluorescent jackets and, when questioned by a policeman, they simply explained they were going to inspect the electrical system. In his book Invisible (2005), the British photographer Stephen Gill photographed people whose clothing made them invisible. They were not wearing the latest Hussein Chalayan creation, but rather "high-visibility" jackets. These Day-Glo, fluorescent jackets, with their retroreflective stripes, are designed to protect workers night and day on roads, railway lines, and building sites. It is ironic that in trying to make them ultravisible, these workers are instead rendered invisible. We are so accustomed to seeing workers in these jackets that we remove them from our radar. In the photographer's [Stephen Gill's] own experience, if he wears a fluorescent jacket, he can move and photograph where he likes. No one pays any attention to him.