BOOK ART // remembering artist Walter SH Hamady

Shortly after I moved back to Iowa in 1990, I began to correspond with a prominent letterpress book artist, paper-maker, collagist, and assemblagist named Walter Hamady (1940-2019), who was well-known as a teacher at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. 

Having earlier taught in Milwaukee for ten years, I became aware of Hamady's work in the 1970s. Because of his liking for Ballast Quarterly Review (which I had founded in 1985), he and I began to exchange spirited letters (along with a mix of enclosures) once or twice or more a month. This led to collaborations of one kind or another, eventually resulting in exhibitions, published essays, and an archive of his artist’s books. I saved everything, even all the envelopes and mailing containers, in part because they were always addressed to mutilations of my name, such as Corps du Roy, Rhoidamoto, Trompe L’Roi at Labbast, Royatolla, and so on. This continued for more than a decade, no doubt to the postman’s amusement (I hope).

Among my favorite of Walter’s hijinks was the occasion on which, in the process of publishing one of his 131 handmade artist’s books, he turned a copy of my book on Art and Camouflage into confetti, combined that with paper pulp, and "camouflaged" my book in one of his own.

While looking back on what I have, I recently produced a twenty-minute video talk (a brief memoir-like tribute) titled BOOK ART: Walter Hamady’s Books, Collages and Assemblages, which can be accessed free online on my YouTube channel.

the organizing principles that underlie all camouflage

Above and below Still excerpts from Art, Design and Gestalt Theory: the film version (2023), a film about the perceptual organizing principles that are fundamental to human vision, including camouflage.

The Anatomy of Color, and Nature's Colorful Palette

I am a decade past retirement age. Despite repeated half-hearted attempts to downsize my possessions, I still have a too-large collection of books. Many of them are exquisite, all but perfectly conceived, designed, and printed. How will I ever part with them? At last I’ve reached a compromise (or so I thought): Short of discarding the finest books, I have pledged to refrain from collecting significant new ones.

But I’ve fallen short of that as well. In recent months, I could not resist buying copies of two magnificent volumes, a misstep no doubt but one I am certain I’ll never regret. They are two stunning clothboard books about color (sorry, e-book editions will not suffice), both by British color expert Patrick Baty. One is titled The Anatomy of Color: The Story of Heritage Paints and Pigments (Thames and Hudson, 2017), and the other (only recently released) is all about color in nature, and—by implication, if not openly discussed—the role of color in camouflage. Produced by Baty and four contributors (Elaine Charwat, Peter Davidson, André Karticzek, and Giulia Simonini), it is titled Nature’s Palette: A Color Reference System from the Natural World (Princeton University Press, 2021).

Both volumes are simply astounding in every regard. Reproduced at top is a page of bird feathers from the volume on color in nature. Each book is 300 pages or more, and while this page is especially striking, there are many more examples, page after page, that are equally unforgettable.

As human folly brings about yet another catastrophe

Above Cover of Ballast Quarterly Review. Vol 8 No 1 (Autumn 1992), featuring a wood engraving by British printmaker Robert Gibbings, titled Fowey Habor (c1919).  All issues of Ballast (a periodical commonplace book that ran for twenty-one years) are now available online as pdf downloads.

•••

Robert Gibbings, Sweet Thames Run Softly. NYC: E.P. Dutton, 1945—

The war [WWII] broke out, but I was overage. Besides, I had met a bullet in the last war. I tried for camouflage. I offered to make drawings from submarines, having already worked underwater in a diving helmet…if it was human folly which had brought about the catastrophe, it was, for the most part, only human beings who were paying the price. The world of nature was unaffected; flowers still bloomed, birds still sang, even butterflies continued their migrations, and rivers flowed towards the sea.

Frank Lloyd Wright | Taliesin West and Camouflage

Mason City poster © Roy R. Behrens

In the following text, the newspaper article referenced is “Architect Wright’s Arizona Home, Last Word in Camouflage, Blends into Landscape of Desert” in The Sacramento Bee (Sacramento CA), May 14, 1940.

In 1911. the American architect Frank Lloyd Wright established a studio near Spring Green, Wisconsin, on a property that had long been owned by his maternal Welsh ancestors, the Lloyd Jones family. He referred to that location as Taliesin, which is Welsh for “shining brow.”

Beginning in 1935, Wright no longer remained in Wisconsin year-round. Instead, he and his students traveled annually to the Southwest, to spend each winter in more compatible weather in a desert setting, twenty-six miles from Phoenix, Arizona. The complex he established there became known as Taliesin West.

In May of 1940, a newspaper article described Wright’s Taliesin West (still unfinished at the time) as the “last word in camouflage.” World War Two was underway (although the US was officially neutral), and the article recommended that “the artists of wartime camouflage could learn a lot from the sprawling, unusual structure” that Wright was then developing in Paradise Valley, near Scottsdale AZ.

Although Wright himself might not refer to his architecture as camouflage, the article goes on to say, it is nothing short of that, since “the building blends so completely with the desert landscape that it is scarcely visible a half-mile away.” Indeed, “were it not for the white canvas roof it would almost be lost in the rugged mountain topography at a distance.”

Proposed book cover (2016) not used

Cedar Rock talk about Wright and Modern-era furniture (2018)

Gertrude Stein as camouflaged in self-effacing Alice

Above Roy R. Behrens, front cover of dust jacket for COOK BOOK: Gertrude Stein, William Cook, and Le Corbusier (Dysart IA: Bobolink Books, 2005).

•••

Sidonie Smith (in a discussion of Stein's autobiography, titled The autobiography of Alice B. Toklas) in Subjectivity, identity, and the body: women's autobiographical practices in the twentieth century. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993, pp. 76-77—

…Stein ventriloquizes "Alice"…

By speaking through the voice of Alice B. Toklas, Stein pursues an art of camouflage. The relationship of cubist painting and camouflage is remarked by "Alice" as she recalls the cannon in camouflage on the Boulevard Raspail in Paris. And later, she notes the significance of camouflage in World War I as she recalls touring the front after the Armistice: "The idea was the same but as after all it was different nationalities that did it the difference was inevitable. The color schemes were different, the designs were different, the way fo placing them was different, it made plain the whole theory of art and its inevitability." Using "Alice" as a piece of camouflage, Stein can make herself the egotistical center of the text and the influential center of twentieth-century modernism. She can, as Timothy Dow Adams argues, publicize herself through a "tall tale" in which "she creates herself as a legendary figure, given to outrageous bragging and superhuman abilities." That is both the art and artifice of her text.

The camouflaged Stein displaces her "monumental egotism" into the self-effacing voice of "Alice"…

Page Spreads from New Book on Dazzle Ships

From DAZZLE SHIPS: World War I and the Art of Confusion

Above Four page spreads from a fantastic new, award-winning book by Chris Barton, with illustrations by Victo Ngai, titled DAZZLE SHIPS: World War I and the Art of Confusion. Minneapolis MN: Millbrook Press, 2017. ISBN 978-1-5124-1014-3. Below The book's spectacular cover.

Midwell Crampton Wilson, Thoughts in Passing. Carroll County Citizen-Times (Delphi IN), August 17, 1918, pp. 1 and 3—

“Do you know anything about camouflage?”

“No, I never eat foreign cheeses.” Now this conversation MUST have taken place in the early stages of the war, for since the American army has been in the thick of the fight, we use the word camouflage as if it had always been in our vocabulary and we know it isn’t a brand of cheese, either.

The war has made quite a contribution to our stock of words. Scarcely a day but that we use “over-the-top.” “Over there,” “somewhere in France,” “carry-on,” “morale,” "hooverize” and “let’s go” are familiar expressions that we use almost constantly.

But few war words are more popular than “camouflage.” The Old Settlers’ ice cream was camouflaged with syrup and condensed milk. A nice brown meringue on top of bread pudding makes it look like something good and that is camouflage. When the guarantors of a picnic eat the back and neck (leaving the drumstick and pulley-bone for the guests) and register great joy in so doing, they are doing the camouflage act that our mothers have done all their lives. The girl at the Old Settlers’ who wore the furs was camouflaging her feelings for style’s sake but when

    “Little grains of powder
     Little dabs of paint
     Make the girl of forty
     Look like what she ain’t”

then it is, that camouflaging is really well done.

I have read that it is the most celebrated word coined in the great war, will undoubtedly live in the dictionaries, and the name and the art which it labels will be credited to the French, who first applied the science of “concealing coloration” as a means of military disguise. But credit for the original idea and its development should rightfully go to an American, Abbott H. Thayer, one of America’s most distinguished painters. It is said that more than twenty years ago Mr. Thayer, as a huntsman and student of bird and animal life, made an exhaustive study of nature’s method in protecting wild things.

The chameleon is an artful little camouflager, being able to change his color to resemble the object on which he lies. It is an excellent defense for him, as he is too small to fight, and does not care to spend too much time fleeing from his enemies, who desire his body for dinner.

The American bobwhite adopts a medley of colors—reddish, black, brown, yellow and white—that completely harmonized with the foliage colors during all seasons of the year. He is present in person, but lost to sight.

The parrot fortifies the defense produced by his rancorous voice by brilliant colors that blend perfectly with the brilliant foliage of his tropical home.

The present camouflage is simply making objects, principally military machines, look like something else—a haystack or a bush—in which practice the painters are simply copying from Nature’s most effective disguises, through which only the expert can see.

The modern army is now using every known device for camouflage. The olive drab or khaki-colored uniform blends into the landscape and is lost to sight much sooner than the more brilliant colors formerly worn by troops. Flashing breastplates, buttons and polished equipments of all kinds have been absolutely discarded for others that do not shine.

The Alpine troops, fighting above the snow lines, went to great extremes in painting themselves white, so that there was no contrast with snow during the day and for night duty troops have painted themselves black for easier hiding. During the spring and early summer green colors are used, and as soon as the season progresses, dabs of yellow, red and golden tints are used to duplicate the color effects of the advancing season. So it is that camouflage dates back farther than the Trojan Horse—it dates back to Nature herself, who gave the cow her mottled hide, no doubt in anticipation of the amateur hunter. The American Indian, by the way, was an adept at camouflage.

A few years ago, a party of us went to the National Military Home, near Marion [IN], to spend Decoration Day. Mr. Wilson was convalescing from an operation for appendicitis. I was thin from worrying. The two girls with us were pale and wan. My father looked at the party and then remarked in his characteristic way that we looked like a bunch of empty snake skins. After dinner on Decoration Day, the two girls looked so exceedingly pale that we insisted they go upstairs and lie down. They were upstairs less than a half hour but when they came down, they looked so wonderfully rested that the whole party became more cheerful. They had color in their cheeks and theirs smiles were bewitching instead of haunting. The change was marvelous and so worthwhile because it helped the “morale” (another war word) of the company. One had to look at these girls twice to notice the camouflage, put on from a box of rouge and some good face powder.

Ever since that day, I have been an ardent believer in face camouflage. Of course, I don’t want to see a girl painted like a battleship, but I can’t help believing in a certain amount of make-up. It is the duty of everyone to appear as beautiful as possible. Red cheeks are prettier than sallow ones and a powdered skin is much neater than an unpowdered one—if you can just keep the world from knowing that you use either rouge or powder. I never have become reconciled to lipstick or an elaborate use of carmine. But just enough to make one look well—and just enough not to get caught at it. This is my notion of real camouflage.

Another form of camouflage the men use is bluffing. I heard the other day of a young man who was in charge of a newly plotted realty tract, upon which the only building was the office of the company. Upon seeing the first person to enter the door, he hastily took down the telephone receiver and commenced:

“Yes, sir, I think we can agree on those terms. Thirty lots in one parcel and twenty in another. Yes, sir, the price is satisfactory—$30,000 at the transfer and the remainder in sixty days. Did you say I could meet you in the morning at nine o’clock and receive your check for $10,000 as the initial payment? Very well, sir.”

Hanging up the receiver, this busy person turned to the man who had entered the office.

“Is there anything I can do for you, sir?”

“Naw, not a thing,” returned the visitor. “I have just come to connect up your telephone, that’s all.”

The fellow was caught in camouflaging and therein lies the sin.

Another instance:

An old fellow on his death bed, in making his will, murmured to his lawyer: “And to each of my employees who have been with me twenty years or more I bequeath $20,000.”

“Holy smoke! What generosity!” the lawyer exclaimed.

“No, not at all,” said the sick man. “You see, none of them have been with me over a year; but it will look good in the papers, won’t it?”

This was a camouflaged will.

Now, Bill Nye [Edgar Wilson Nye], the humorist who appeared in Delphi [IN] with [James Whitcomb] Riley years ago, didn’t believe in camouflage at all. One time he had a cow to sell and he advertised her as follows:

“Owing to my ill health, I will sell at my residence, in township 19, range 18, according to the government survey, one plush raspberry cow, aged eight years. She is of undoubted courage and gives milk frequently. To one who does not fear death in any form she would be a great boon. She is very much attached to her present home with a stay chain, but she will be sold to anyone who will agree to treat her right. She is one-fourth shorthorn and three-fourths hyena. I will also throw in a double-barrel shotgun, which goes with her. Her name is Rose. I would rather sell her to a nonresident.”

I have often wondered if he sold the cow.

Camouflage is a useful art and an interesting study and we await with interest the homecoming of our boys, who will be able to tell us more of the real wartime camouflage. Until then we will use the word at our own sweet will and make it mean all kinds of arts in which “a gay deceiver” is proficient.

Dazzle Ships | Chris Barton and Victo Ngai 2017

Cover illustration | Victo Ngai 2017

Above The cover of a wonderful forthcoming book by award-winning children's book author Chris Barton, titled DAZZLE SHIPS: World War I and the Art of Confusion (Milbrook Press, 2017). The illustrator is Victo Ngai, about whom you can find out more at this Science Library Journal post.

The cover is phenomenal, as is the one full-color page spread I've seen (reproduced below). The illustrator is a graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design (my alma mater as well), where she studied illustration. As anyone knows who follows this blog, the RISD Fleet Library is also the location of a collection of the full-color lithographic dazzle ship camouflage plans from WWI (one of only three surviving sets).

Wish you had a copy now? That would be wonderful. Unfortunately, I'm jumping the gun because I couldn't wait to share the news. It won't actually be published until September, but you can pre-order it now.

Page spread from Chris Barton, DAZZLE SHIPS (2017)

Dazzle: Disguise and Disruption in War and Art

Above The wonderfully appropriate cover of a forthcoming book by British historian James Taylor (former curator of paintings at the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich UK), featuring one of the woodcuts of dazzle-painted ships by Vorticist Edward Wadsworth. The book, titled Dazzle: Disguise and Disruption in War and Art, won't be available until mid-September 2016, but it can be pre-ordered now on Amazon, on both US and UK sites. Unprecedented in its detail, it is a significant new account of the development of dazzle ship camouflage in World World War I. The following is the publisher's note on its contents—

While it is a constant throughout history that conflict has inspired and engendered great art, it is a much rarer event for art to impact directly upon the vicissitudes of war. Yet, in the course of the First World War, a collision of naval strategy and the nascent modern art movement, led to some two thousand British ships going to sea as the largest painted modernist “canvases” in the world covered in abstract, clashing, decorative, and geometric designs in a myriad of colors. Dazzle camouflage had arrived.

Heavily inspired by the Cubism and British Vorticism art movements, dazzle was conceived and developed by celebrated artist and then naval commander Norman Wilkinson. Dazzle camouflage rejects concealment in favor of disruption. It seeks to break up a ship’s silhouette with brightly contrasting geometric designs to make a vessel’s speed and direction incredibly difficult to discern. False painted bow-waves and sterns were used to confuse and throw off the deadly U-boat captains. The high contrast shapes and colors further made it very difficult to match up a ship in the two halves of an optical naval rangefinder. This new book traces the development of the dazzle aesthetic from theory into practice and beyond.

Camouflage Artist | John Vassos

Cover of John Vassos biography (2016)

We are awaiting the release of the first book-length biography of the American book artist, designer, and camouflage artist John Vassos (1898-1985). Written by Danielle Shapiro, the biography is titled John Vassos: Industrial Design for Modern Life, and is slated for release in late March 2016 (see cover above).

If people have heard of Vassos, it is usually because of his innovative Art Deco-era graphic novels, of which the best known title is Phobia, which was initially published in 1931, then reprinted by Dover Publications in 2009, the cover of which is shown below.

Cover of Dover edition of Phobia (2009)

On the other hand, they may also know about his prolific contributions to American industrial design, including TV cabinets and various other devices, while a corporate designer at the RCA Corporation. His design for a RCA Victor Special Model K, Portable Electric Phonograph (c1935) is reproduced below.

It is generally less well-known that he served with the US Army Air Corps during World War II as a camouflage consultant. He also worked for the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the precursor to the CIA in connection with efforts to support the underground resistance in Greece. In the process, he is said to have secretly parachuted into Greek territory on two occasions.

John Vassos, RCA phonograph design (c1936)