intentional duality for concealment and differentation

Deyan Sudjic, The Language of Things. London: Allen Lane, 2008, pp. 152 and 154—

Camouflage is ostensibly a functional, practical phenomenon, adopted by the armed forces of every country for the purposes of concealment. But over the years it has in fact been transformed into a pattern for differentation. Every national army has its own camouflage pattern, and uses it to tell friend from foe. At the same time that camouflage tries to make its wearers invisible, it is also generating a highly visible signal, intended to identify them to their own side.

lamb[l]ast / a lone wolf in snow-covered surroundings

WWII Finnish troops in snow-covered surrounding

There is a wartime Boston news report (December 1944) which features an American artist named Nathaniel J[udah] Jacobson (1916-1996), who was a US Army camoufleur. Originally from Boston, he had studied painting at the School of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, MIT, and at Yale University, where he earned a BFA degree in 1941.

When the US entered World War II at the end of 1941, Jacobson enlisted. In 1944, while stationed in Europe, he was a contributor to the development of white cape coverings for infantry in snow-covered surroundings on the border of Belgium and Germany.

His involvement in all this was reported in the Boston Globe on December 14, 1944, in an article with the headline BOSTON ARTIST AIDS IN SAVING GIS BY SLICK CAMOUFLAGE WORK (pp. 1-2), in which Jacobson is described as being the “boss of fifty Belgian girls as a factory supervisor in a First Army camouflage unit.”

While encamped in the Hurtgen Forest, the American infantry was unprepared for the sudden first snowfall, which left them “unduly exposed to enemy fire against the white background…” As a result, "camouflage engineers were called and given seven days to produce. It meant seven days in which to design, obtain materials, obtain labor and manufacture concealing [white] snow capes for all frontline troops.” Within 24 hours, a factory had been set up, laborers had been hired, and thread and muslin were flown in. “Within 36 hours the first snow cape was rattled off the production line.”

As for Private Jacobson, his “part of the job was training the help, mostly Belgian girls, ironing out the production bottlenecks, and [in] general speeding up” the process. “He did this job with such good effect that by the end of the fifth day—two days ahead of schedule—the much-needed capes were on their way to the boys whose lives depended on them.”

…”Factory jobs are curiously incongruous for many of the men of this battalion, which comprises in addition to the Boston artist [Jacobsen], landscape artisans, cameramen, advertising layout men and former movie directors. Incidently, they camouflaged [the insulated clothing of this correspondent (reporter Iris Carpenter)] against pneumonia—she hopes—a sheepskin coat which they have spotched brown and olive on the skin side. If snow falls she will wear the wool side out and risk observation by nothing more dangerous than the GIs.“

•••

One week after that article was published, a second news report (written by Hal Boyle) appeared in the Times-Mirror (Warren PA), in which Private First Class Jacobson (apparently newly promoted) is described as “discontented” with his job, and is quoted very candidly. According to him, “I got this job—which I don’t like—because I had picked up some French out of a phrase book and was able to tell the girls what we wanted done.”

“I never even worked in a clothing factory before—never wanted to,” he adds. “…And here I am running one. You sure do strange things in the Army.”

The young Belgian women he supervises, he continued, “…are just like American girls. They never stop talking. And the way they spend their money! One girls just paid 900 francs for a pair of shoes—three weeks salary for one pair of shoes!

They have been going to some American army dances. That’s what they talk about most all day long. They are envious of American girls because they heard American girls could go to dances alone. Here, even if she is 25 years old, a girl can’t go to a dance unless her parents come along, too.”

Looking “moodily” at “the happy humming girls” in his workforce, Jacobson explains: “I am a happily married man—this is no place for me. They should put a single man on this job. But I guess that’s why they put me here—because I am an old married man—and not a wolf.”

In contrast, his asistant and co-worker, Private Donavan Mccomber from Radcliff OH, glanced over the factory workroom, whistled cheerfully, and said:

“Well, so we got to work in a roomful of girls. It ain’t so bad. I can think of a lot worse ways to win the war.”

•••

Following the war, Jacobson returned to the Boston area, became a research associate at MIT, and embarked on long-term art-and-science color research, including responses to color, and computer modeling. He continued to paint and exhibit, and, in 1975, published a book on color, titled The Sense of Color: A Portfolio in Visuals (Van Nostrand Reinhold).

concealed as snow, as a tree stump or a bale of hay

WWI US soldier positioned on tree stump (c1918)

Oliver Herford, quoted by Constance Murray Greene in HUSH, BLUSH AND PLUSH IN NEW BOOKS OF POEMS, The New York Sun, 19 January 1919, p. 11—

If you can stand upon one spot
And look like something you are not
And wouldn’t if you could be—say
A bean bag or a bale of hay—
You’ll find it quite a useful stunt
To practice on the Western Front:
This picture shows how Private Dunne,
Disguised as snow, deceived the Hun.
Who could not possibly see through
The camouflage; no more can you!”

Oliver Herford, An Alphabet of Celebrities

 

barber pole stripes, peppermint candy, prison stripes

Antoinette, STRIPES ARE A PET STYLE OF NEW FALL FASHIONS in The Spokesman-Review (Spokane WA) Woman’s Section, November 12, 1953, p. 8—

If you want your clothes to have a new look this fall, by all means consider something in stripes. It is one of fashion’s pet styles, just now, and stripes appear in many different interpretations.

Zebra stripes, harlequin stripes, prison stripes, barber pole stripes, peppermint candy stripes. On the other hand, there are muted sombre stripes which blend into the other through subtle shadings.…

Alfred Steiglitz photograph (1889)

Contrary to the general feeling, there is no law on figure camouflage by which stripes up and down will make you look slim and tall while stripes around the figure will make you look shorter and heavier. Yet, most saleswomen, most articles and books on how-to-dress, and many fashion “experts” are likely to advise you to wear vertical stripes if you want to look taller and avoid horizontal stripes if you need to look slimmer in your clothes. It simply is not true, and if you are not willing to believe it do what I did, try several striped styles on and see what they do to your looks.

One can’t tell in advance—it depends upon how the stripes are placed, how much spacing there is between them, how nearly the same width each alternate color is, the boldness of the contrast…

WWI camouflaged British ship in dock

 

BARBER’S POLE IN GERMAN COLORS EXCITES YOUNKERS, in Wilkes Barre Leader and Evening News (Wilkes Barre PA) April 24, 1918—

Yonkers NY—A barber’s pole, displaying the German colors, caused some excitement here, and the police were called.

Barber Fred Milazow explained that some of the stripes had turned black from the weather. He gave the offending pole a shampoo and all was serene.

Olivette's mysteries | To be clasped to Flanders mud

The Mysterious Olivette (1918)

Above A photograph (with digital coloring) of The Mysterious Olivette, shown “dancing the Diablo Tarantella in the third act of The Lilac Domino at the Empire Theatre in Liverpool UK. Published in The Bystander on March 20, 1918, p. 609, the headline caption simply read Of Course it’s Camouflage!

And below is an excerpt from a column in the same issue, p. 594—

And what [for soldiers on leave if] there were no camouflage dances? For a camouflage dance, you know, is just exactly like other dances, only, for camouflage, there’s a gramophone instead of a band, and sandwiches instead of quail, and you wear, if possible, a “simple” frock, for you never quite know if someone almost straight from the trenches won’t arrive, and to be clasped close to Flanders mud in white tulle or rose-pink ninon is—well, in any case, rather nice, really.

•••

And alas, one of our favorite old-timey comedy lines (an exchange between dancers)—

“Oh, I’m sorry, I’m a little stiff from badminton.”

“I don’t care where you’re from. You’ll never dance with me again!”

Cartoonist Cliff Sterrett | Safety in Camouflage

Below This camouflage cartoon by American artist Cliff Sterrett (1883-1964) was featured in a comic strip series called Polly and Her Pals. It was published in the Salt Lake Herald (Salt Lake UT) on September 25, 1918. In an earlier post, we featured another Sterrett cartoon.

Camouflage costume results in a periscope neck

Above Just found this. It's a hopelessly grainy news photograph from the Des Moines Daily News (Des Moines IA), April 29, 1919, p. 5. The caption reads as follows—

Despite this successful "camouflage costume," we rather suspect this is a girl and not a steamer: Miss Lurline de Marals, artist, wore it at a recent Mardi Gras festival in Oakland CA. Every man in the place had a periscope neck.

See also scandalous bathing attire.

Maurice Ketten | Grandpa hoodwinks Grandma

Maurice Ketten | Ye olde striped park bench trick

WWI Camouflage, Motion Pictures and Surrealism

Charlie Chaplin disguised as tree trunk in Shoulder Arms (1918)

Above Screen grab from Charles Chaplin's famous film, Shoulder Arms (1918) about the surrealist dimension of being a doughboy during World War I , in the process of which he disguises himself as a tree trunk. In fact, it wasn't entirely absurd, since it was not unheard of to make use of steel-lined imitation tree trunks as elevated observation posts (see close-up below).

Phony tree trunk observation post (c1918)

Camouflage has everything to do with film-making, from costumes and make-up, to camera work and scenic design. Elsewhere we have talked about a few of the contributions made by Hollywood-based special effects designers, but there are many (many) more points of connection (in both World Wars), the majority of which are waiting to be documented.

Speaking of Surrealism (which I tend to think of as Dada + Freud, thanks to André Breton), the German-born American photographer and designer Erwin Blumenfeld (1897-1969) once made a Dada-inspired photo collage portrait of Chaplin (below), in which he appears to be wearing an image-adorned WWI trench helmet. The image on the helmet is from a well-known Dadaist poster from 1922.

Erwin Blumenfeld, collage portrait of Charlie Chaplin

•••

Melvin W. Riddle, CAMOUFLAGE! Concerning One of the Major Arts of Motion Pictures. The Atlanta Constitution. Sunday, October 24, 1920—

CAMOUFLAGE!
A new word—coined during the great war by the French, to denote an art which was highly developed during the war. A new word, but an age-old art—old as war itself, older than mankind, for even Nature made use of it as a means of protection for animals and plants. Truly, an age-old idea, but only in the last few years has it been developed by mankind to that state of perfection wherein it might be called an art.
    
Camouflage saved from distruction during the war innumerable lives and properties of inestimable value. Now that the war is over, one might think that the word and the art would temporarily become passé and useless until another war should come along to revive them. But such is not the case, for camouflage is an art without a knowledge of which, one of the greatest industries of today—the motion picture industry—could hardly exist.

Camouflage and the Movies
The art of camouflage is a vital factor—in fact, it might be said, almost a prime factor in the production of motion pictures, and it is with that phase of camouflage that this article is concerned.
    
It is the general impression, perhaps, that the war itself first developed the art of camouflage. This impression, however, is erroneous. For long before the war began, the art had been developed to a high degree by the industry of motion picture production, but as developed by this industry, it was an unidentified art because it was an art without a name. The truth of this assertion is proven by the fact that when America entered the war, men from the motion pictures studios, who had gained a knowledge of the art of scenic deception, formed an important part of the ranks of special camouflage corps which were sent over there. This was because these men had already a practical knowledge of this great study and had only to adapt this knowledge to the particular requirements of defense in war.
    
The one great difference between camouflage as practiced in motion pictures and as practiced in war is that war camouflage, although deceiving to the human optics, is readily detected by the camera, while in motion pictures the camouflage is especially arranged and prepared to deceive the eye of the camera, although it sometimes also deceives the human eye, unless a very close-up view is obtained. Primarily, it is the camera lens upon which the deception is practiced, however, for the eye of the camera is ultimately the eyes of the motion picture audience.

Vital Necessity
Motion pictures, before the beginning of the war, did more and are now doing more to develop the art of camouflage on a large scale than any other industry or even possibly could do. Camouflage is the very life of a motion picture—a vital necessity. Of course, the art has been employed from time immemorial in the theatrical profession—in the dressings of stage settings for legitimate productions, but camouflage, as used on a stage, is very limited in its scope, and is admittedly camouflage, for this reason loses its very effectiveness. It is when camouflage is mistaken for the genuine and the delusion is unquestioned, that it really serves the purpose for which it is intended.
    
Examples of some of the numerous instances where camouflage is employed in motion pictures might be of interst. At the Lasky studio, for instance, which is one of the largest of west coast film plants, one might see on every hand the evidences of this great art.
    
To begin with, the very make-up of the players is often the most perfect camouflage. The feeble-looking old man or the dissipated, rum-soaked hobo might be, in reality, one of the most gentle and best-appearing young men on the lot, hiding his real identity under a skillful application of camouflage.…
   
Even the most conscientious, exacting and painstaking producers, who fairly dote on realism in their productions and always secure it whenever possible, are never slow to admit the importance and the value of the art of camouflage, and the great frequency and regularity with which it is employed in the production of motion pictures.

Dazzle Camouflage | Chicanery & Conspicuousness

essay by Roy R. Behrens

This essay on the "social repercussions of World War I ship camouflage," originally published about a year ago, has now been expanded and slightly reworded, with illustrations added. The full article can be accessed online here.

Camouflage Hoodies | Sinister French Artillery Robes

early WWI French camouflage (c1914)

In earlier blog entries (such as one on camouflaged robes, and a second on French camouflage and criminals), we've posted information about the hooded outfits that were devised by French artists who were serving in artillery teams at the beginning of World War I. As I've described elsewhere—

…what we call camouflage was first promoted by artists serving in the French Army in the early years of WWI. While there is some confusion about which individual initiated the ideas, the reasons are not in contention. Soldiers assigned to artillery teams were dismayed by the ease with which airborne enemy spotters could find and report the positions of their field artillery. In response, they initiated two countermeasures: the application of disruptive ("broken color") patterns on the surface of their cannons, and the donning by those in artillery teams of sinister-looking hooded robes, called cagoules (they closely resembled the outfit worn by a French crime novel character called Fantomas (c. 1911) or darkened paint-stained versions of Ku Klux Klan ceremonial robes).•

A surprising number of photographs of these hoodie-like camouflage outfits have survived, including a handful of full-color images in the collection of the Bibliothéque Nationale de France, and can be accessed online (posted here are restored, cropped and cleaned-up renditions of those). Other images of these outfits, whether black and white photographs and drawings, or painted illustrations by artists, were also commonly reproduced in contemporaneous magazines, such as on the cover of Scientific American (September 29, 1917). Even a few of the robes have survived.

• From Roy R. Behrens, "Khaki to khaki (dust to dust): the ubiquity of camouflage in human experience" in Ann Elias, Ross Harley and Nicholas Tsoutas, eds., Camouflage Cultures: Beyond the Art of Disappearance. Sydney AU: Sydney University Press, 2015, pp. 1-15.

 

Camouflage Artist | Walter L. Tubesing

French camoufleurs armband insignia (not the US version)*

Walter L. Tubesing (1889-1949) was an American artist from St. Paul MN. He is of particular interest because he was among the artists who comprised the first American Army Camouflage Corps during World War I. He began his training (along with 250 others) at Camp American University (Washington DC) in September 1917. While in training there, he was listed as having contributed to issues of The Camoufleur, an illustrated camp newspaper that we've blogged about before.

Their training continued in the US for four months, and then the unit was reassigned to France (landing at Brest). Corporal Tubesing served as a camoufleur in France (Paris, Dijon, Nancy, Chateau Thierry and St. Michiel) for the rest of the war. At Dijon, he and other soldiers worked with French women in producing camouflage netting, and contributed to the camouflage of YMCA tents (see example below), where childcare was available for the French workers. He and his fellow camoufleurs even produced a circus-themed musical show for the French children.

Camouflaged YMCA tent in France, c1918. Public domain.

When his Tubesing’s unit returned to the US in February 1919, he was among those listed in an article in the society pages of the Washington Times (February 9, 1919, p11), which reported on the fundraising activities of the League of American Penwomen. Through the courtesy of the Fortieth Engineers, the article notes, members of “the Camouflage Section will make the posters and decorations” for the organization’s upcoming carnival ball. It also offers this aside—

Men of the camouflage corps are seen on the streets of Washington wearing funny looking yellow lizards on the left shoulder. The lizard is really a chameleon, a “critter” which changes color according to the background on which it is placed. The insignia therefore is significant of their work.

The following is a list of the camouflage artists who contributed to the carnival ball (including our many corrections): "Leslie Thrasher, H. K[err] Eby, A. Bloudheim, H[enry] R. Sutter, A. Rottnere [probably Abraham Rattner], G[eorge] B[radford] Ashworth, Fred[eric] S[eymour] [called Feg] Murray, Robert Laswent [maybe Robert Lawson], Joseph Cox, [Frederic] Earl Christie [Christy], Frank [Francis William] Swain, Don Methvin, Walter Tubesing, Howard [Ashman] Patterson and [William]Twigg Smith."

A month later, Tubesing’s work in camouflage was described at length in the Minneapolis Sunday Tribune (March 9, 1919), in an article titled CAMOUFLAGE IN WAR WORK; ARTISTS TOIL AS FOE SHELLS FLY. Corporal Walter Tubesing, Back From the Front; Shatters Several Illusions. Fish Net, Chicken Wire, Burlap and Canvas Important Tools of Workers. A photograph of the artist (not clear enough to publish here) appeared with the article.

The article states that “Mr. Tubesing lives at 714 Ashland Avenue, St. Paul, but is a member of the Attic Club in Minneapolis and has a studio here.” Through other sources, we learned that he was married to Lura Tubesing, and that, in 1940, they lived at 1854 Jefferson Avenue in St. Paul.

In the Brainerd Daily Dispatch (Brainerd MN), on April 4, 1949, page 4, there was news about his death. He died in St. Paul at age 60 on April 1, 1949, in the collision of a car driven by Alvin Hofstedt (age 35), a co-worker in St. Paul, and a Northwestern Railway passenger train, at a grade crossing near Tubesing’s home.

* Image is a detail from Hardy Blechman, DPM: Disruptive Pattern Material: An Encyclopedia of Camouflage (London: DPM, 2004), p. 274.

Apache Camouflage

Design © Roy R. Behrens, from Edward Curtis photograph

From John G. Bourke, On the Border with Crook. Lincoln NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1971 (originally published in 1891), p. 37—

They [Apache warriors] knew how to disguise themselves so thoroughly that one might almost step upon a warrior thus occupied before he could detect his presence. Stripped naked, with head and shoulders wrapped up in a bundle of yucca shoots or sacaton grass [sporobolus or dropseed grass], and with body rubbed over with clay or sand along which it wriggled as sinuously and as venomously as the rattler itself, the Apache could and did approach to within earshot of the whites, and even entered the enclosures of the military camps, as at [Forts] Grant and Crittenden, where we on several occasions discovered his footprints alongside the ollas, or water jars.

Steganography, Camouflage and Eviatar Zerubavel

Cover of Hidden in Plain Sight (2015)

Above Cover of the latest camouflage-related book, titled Hidden in Plain Sight: The Social Structure of Irrelevance, just out from Oxford University Press. It's the latest achievement by Rutgers sociologist Eviatar Zerubavel, who is well-known for his earlier books, such as The Elephant in the Room: Silence and Denial in Everyday Life (2006) and (our favorite) The Fine Line: Making Distinctions in Everyday Life (1993).

•••

In Zerubavel's insightful and wide-ranging book, among the subjects introduced is a current encryption technique known as steganography. Now practiced in its digital form, the term was originated in 1499 (so says Wikipedia) by Johannes Trithemius in Steganographia, "a treatise on cryptography and steganography, disguised as a book on magic." We ourselves first learned about it in 2006 at an international conference at the University of Northern Iowa on Camouflage: Art, Science and Popular Culture, at which digital media scholar Eugene Wallingford (UNI Computer Science Professor) offered a wonderful overview of current uses of digital steganography.

Here is an excerpt from Zerubavel's text about steganography (pp. 35-36)—

There is a particular form of background-matching camouflage known as steganography, in which actual "signals" are purposely designed to be mistaken for mere "noise" and thereby effectively ignored. One can thus send a covert message in such a way that no one apart from oneself and one's intended audience (who are in fact usually alerted to expect it) even suspects its existence. Whereas in cryptography  only the content of the hidden is concealed, in steganography, its very existence is concealed as well.

William Jennings Bryan's Camouflage 1918

William Jennings Bryan (1908)

Above William Jennings Bryan during 1908 presidential campaign.

•••

 (Anon, CAMOUFLAGE BY MRS. [WILLIAM JENNINGS] BRYAN: There's A Reason for His Long Locks, Says Former Secretary in Washington Post, March 1, 1918—

Syracuse NY, February 28—Camouflage was invented by Mrs. William J. Bryan way back in 1882 to hide—oh, well, read Mr. Bryan's own explanation, given for the first time today, as to why he maintains the famous flowing locks of hair that tickle his collar:

"It's my wife's idea," he smiled. "The Lord made me for utility rather than for beauty. He gave me ears that stick out a great deal more than artistic standards require.

I had my hair cropped away back in 1882 when I was engaged to my wife and the result was terrible. I nearly lost her. She has made me wear my hair long ever since. It is what I call justifiable camouflage."

Bryan Dollar (1896)

• Re Bryan Dollar, acccording to Wikipedia, "Democratic and Populist presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan proposed free silver, that is, if you presented silver at the mint, you'd get it back, stamped into silver dollars. At the time, the worth of the metal in a silver dollar was 47 cents, so obviously people would want to do this and it would be inflationary. This piece demonstrates the argument against free silver, championed by Republican candidate William McKinley."

A.E Hayward's Camouflage Cartoons

Above Cartoon by A.E. (Alfred Earl) Hayward (1884-1939), from his daily series “The Padded Cell,” in the Philadelphia Public Ledger on October 4, 1917, p. 22. In addition to this series, Hayward also originated "Pinheads” and “Somebody’s Stenog," a strip about a stenographer named Cam O’Flage.

•••

Anon, CAMOUFLAGE BATHING SUIT CAUSES SENSATION, in Boston Sunday Globe, August 24, 1919, p. 47—

Old Orchard Beach, August 23—This week the town has been filled to its capacity. No such summer business was ever seen here before. There were more automobiles at Old Orchard Sunday afternoon than ever before in a single day, according to the traffic officers.

A camouflage bathing suit was seen here for the first time this week. It was worn by a tall, slim beauty, who attracted more attention than a flock of seaplanes. As she sauntered down the beach she resembled a crazy patchwork quilt. Beach loungers thought she was wrapped in a silk bed covering. She presented a wonderfully attractive picture, however, as she trotted down to the water and plunged into the surf.

What Is Camouflage? | René Bache

René Bache, "What Is 'Camouflage'?" (1918)

Above Full-page newspaper article titled “What Is Camouflage?” by René Bache, in The Daily Ardmoreite (Ardmore OK), March 6, 1918, p. 6. Born in Philadelphia, Bache (1861-1933) was a journalist and author who wrote for Scientific American and other periodicals. He was also the Great-Great-Great-Great Grandson of Benjamin Franklin.

•••

An excerpt pertaining to ship camouflage from the same article—

Up to now the warpaint of fighting ships has been slate gray, which was supposed to harmonize with the sea, but henceforth (though the problem has not been worked out satisfactorily yet) they will be "camouflaged" in schemes of colors. In the American navy this idea is being tried out on destroyers; and not long ago one of Uncle Sam's submarines, while taking part in maneuvers, actually got lost from the fleet because (being adorned in this way) the other ships lost sight of it.

The United States government now requires that all of its merchant ships shall be similarly treated, information for the purpose being furnished to owners and ship masters by the Bureau of War Risk Insurance. They are at liberty to choose their own painting scheme from several "recipes" supplied. Of these the simplest consists in painting the vessel in such a way as to eliminate highlights and shadows [called countershading]. The under part of the "overhang" Is made white, and the super structure dark, the result being a blend with sea and sky.

Other schemes consist in arrangements of the primary colors In various patterns, the effect sought being a blend that will produce visually the impression of gray. But this gray has to the eye much more "deadness" than gray paint. It is misty. Optically speaking, the same principle applies as in the case of the zebra, whose black and white stripes, vivid enough when seen close at hand, are meant by nature as a protective coloration—in other words, to make tho animal less visible. Seen from a distance on its native desert, its stripes blend into a gray that is much less conspicuous than a mule's "all-over" gray.

One of these arrangements is of wavy stripes, green, blue and white. Stripes of curvilinear and scroll forms, it is found, have a confusing effect to the eye, the outlines of a hull thus adorned being lost to view at any considerable distance. Incidentally they make difficult the focusing of a telescope or binocular upon the ship, rendering it harder to see the craft distinctly.

Some of those schemes, curiously enough, seem to split up the ship's hull and superstructure into several parts, visually, with an appearance as if sea and sky showed between. The whole puzzle is very difficult to analyze, but when it has been thoroughly worked out, and its elements reduced to a scientific basis, it may be possible to make a vessel actually invisible at a distance of a mile.

Meanwhile, and for present purposes, the object sought is to render ships less easy to see. The sea is blue. The sea is green. The sea is mottled gray. Its color depends upon that of the day, which it reflects. Take a bucketful of water from the ocean, and it has no color. In reality the sea has no color of its own. How, then, shall it be successfully imitated?

One expert [William Andrew Mackay], who has made long study of the subject, declares that the color effect of the sea is a mixture of violet and green. If, therefore, a ship be painted with these two colors in a suitable pattern (stripes wavy or in scrolls), it will be made relatively invisible, because at a distance the light rays will mingle and so affect the optic nerve as to produce a color impression like that of the sea.

Laura Levin on Camouflage & Performance Art

Above The dust jacket of a new important book: Laura Levin, Performing Ground: Space, Camouflage and the Art of Blending In. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014. The following is an excerpt from its promotional text—

Performing Ground is the first book to explore camouflage as a performance practice, arguing that the act of blending into ones environment is central to the ways we negotiate our identities in and through space. Laura Levin tracks contemporary performances of camouflage through a variety of forms—performative photography; environmental, immersive, and site-specific performance; activist infiltration; and solo artworks—and rejects the conventional dismissal of blending in as an abdication of self. Instead, she contemplates the empowering political possibilities of "performing ground," of human bodies intermingling with the material world, while directly engaging with the reality that women and other marginalized persons are often relegated to the background and associated with the properties of space. Performing Ground engages these questions through the works of some of today's most exciting performance artists…
 

Camouflaged Courtship

Grandma Demon Chaperone (1917)

Above A cartoon by F. Fox from the Richmond Times-Dispatch, August 21, 1917, p. 7. An accompanying headline title reads: Grandma the Demon Chaperone Is Certain That Clara's New Striped Dress Is Camouflage, and in the cartoon itself Grandma is saying That young man may be keeping his arm to himself but…

•••

Anon, "SWEET GIRL" IS SHERIFF: Masher Is Nabbed by Officer in Feminine Camouflage in the Idaho Register (Blackfoot ID), October 14, 1919—

Pawnee, Okla.—When Frank Brown of Meramec accosted a beautiful woman "just too sweet to lie," on a street corner the other night, he was rudely shocked. A strong hand gripped his right arm and a voice that was anything but sweet informed him he was under arrest. In the struggle the "sweet thing's" hair came off and the red ribbon about the left wrist was torn from the sleeve, and the features of the sheriff, smeared with paint and powder, were revealed. Brown was charged with improper use of the mails in attempting to make an appointment with a young woman with whom he was not acquainted.

•••

From Questions and Answers in the Richmond Times-Dispatch, June 24, 1919, p. 6—

Legs—I would like to know how to reduce the size of my legs. One leg is 14 1/2 inches around the heaviest part of the calf, and the other is 15 inches. I weigh 120 pounds, and my body is otherwise slim.

Answer—The calf of the leg measures 14 1/2 inches in the ideal woman. Wear vertical stripes if you wish to camouflage your perfect calves.