I Never Met a Morphosis I Didn't Like / Smoke Dreams

Two British comic drawings (c1890s)

As I was growing up, adults used to discourage boys from smoking by saying, "Don't smoke or you'll turn into a cigarette." I never quite knew what that meant. But it was an ancient admonition, of the sort that I grew up on. I confirmed that about ten years ago, when I ran across a Victorian-era cartoon (it's the bottom row in the image above) in which (left to right) a smoking Cub Scout turns into a cigarette. Aha! Exactly as anticipated.

More recently, maybe ten days ago, I ran across another (no doubt British) cartoon, as seen in the upper row, in which a man (not a boy it seems) also becomes a cigarette. It even had a title that read THE EVOLUTION OF A CIGARETTE. No doubt a poke at Charles Darwin.

To me, these are of additional interest because they are Darwin-era examples of comic metamorphosis, which is of considerable interest. I have sometimes tried to write about that subject, not very successfully, and as recently as earlier this year, I gave an online talk about it, titled I Never Met a Morphosis I Didn't Like, as seen in the title slide below.

One might also benefit from my video on varieties of creativity, which is free to view online.

a slide talk on metamorphosis / Roy R. Behrens c2025

YMCA canteener recalls french camouflage factory

Above Photograph by Mole and Thomas (Chicago) of 8,000 camp personnel at Camp Wheeler, Macon GA, arranged to form the symbol of the YMCA. The actual dimensions of the assembled group was 385 feet wide x 315 feet high.

•••

Elizabeth Hart, YMCA Canteener on Active Duty with AEF in France, in a letter to her mother on December 14, 1918, as published in MISS HART CHAPARONES 12 SOLDIERS AT DINNER DANCE: St Louis Girl Canteening in France, Writes She Like Mother of a Large Family, and Her Sister, Clara, Said She Felt Like ‘Mrs. Ruggles.’ in the St Louis Star and Times, January 21, 1919, p. 11—

We first met Monsieur Chazat at Madame Gluntz’s dinner. He is the artist from the camouflage factory…

…Monsieur Chazat made three sketches in all. The men, three who happened to come into the kitchen, were delighted with them and he is coming back next Tuesday to do more. Clara and I made the cocoa as usual but did not serve it out to the Hut—however, I washed cups, opened cakes, mixed new cocoa in the studio-kitchen all afternoon, falling over the camouflage artist at intervals.

Monsieur Chazat went over to the mess with us. He seemed to enjoy it. When he makes our portraits, or rather does them, we shall send them to you. We are going down to the camouflage factory to see him some day soon. Of course, since November 11th the demand for camouflage is low, so the artist has plenty of times for guests. He seems to adore to come to camp—drank cocoa and smoked cigarettes as if he had never seen either before.

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.

blending / assuming the look of an overturned stump

Above  Cartoon from Lilliput Magazine, date and artist unknown.

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Arthur Henry Howard Heming, The Drama of the Forests, Romance and Adventure.  Garden City: Doubleday, Page and Co, p. 61—

As regards trailing game, whether large or small, he [a Canadian Native American] cautioned me to watch my quarry carefully, and instantly to become rigid at the first sign that the game was about to turn round or raise its head to peer in my direction. More than that, I should not only remain motionless while the animal was gazing toward me, but I should assume at once some form that suggested the character of the surrounding trees or bushes or rocks. For example, among straight-boled, perfectly vertical trees, I should stand upright; among uprooted trees, I should assume the character of an overturned stump, by standing with inclined body, bent legs, and arms and fingers thrust out at such angles as to suggest the roots of a fallen tree. And he added that if I doubted the wisdom of such an act, I should test it at a distance of fifty or a hundred paces, and prove the difficulty of detecting a man who assumed a characteristic landscape pose among trees or rocks. That was years before the World War had brought the word camouflage into general use; for as a matter of fact, the forest Indians had been practicing camouflage for centuries and, no doubt, that was one reason why many of the Indians in the Canadian Expeditionary Force did such remarkable work as snipers.

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.

attribute rhymes, proximity, and aligned continuities

suite of design-themed posters (designer unknown)

Camouflage artists are not alone in making use of unit-forming factors. As is evidenced by this series of posters, graphic designers make incessant daily use of attribute similarities, proximity, and aligned continuities. Each of these posters is a tribute to a different variety of design (they represent—from left to right—graphic, industrial, and interior design). While each is unique, they hold together as a suite, like a set of dinnerware, as variations on a theme. Recurrent circles (in the form of a plate, a sphere, and side views of a circular table and lamp) are an especially important motif. More>>>

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

 

The gift of seeing resemblances

Jacky Bowring, “Revealing Concealment: The Strange Case of the MoMA Roof Garden” in Thresholds (MIT Press). Fall 2005, p. 17—

Camouflage and mimicry are predicated on concepts of simulation and resemblance, and the desire to produce and discern likeness is ingrained in human experience. In his 1933 essay, “On the Mimetic Faculty“ Walter Benjamin aligned mimetic imitation, or mimicry, with all of the “higher functions” of humanity, and pointed to a time when the “law of similarity” governed life, ruling both “microcosm and macrocosm.” Benjamin conceived of mimesis as a powerful impulse, and a desire to assimilate the self into the other, a social practice, as a foundation for art and language, stating, “nature creates similarities. One need only think of mimicry. The highest capacity for producing similarities, however, is man’s. His gift of seeing resemblances is nothing other than a rudiment of the powerful compulsion in former times to become and behave like something else. Perhaps there is none of his higher functions in which his mimetic faculty does not play a decisive role.”

Horsehead / Mole and Thomas

RELATED LINKS
The Living Photographs of Mole and Thomas
Mimicry, Metaphor, and Mistake
Embedded Figures in Art, Architecture and Design
Khaki to Khaki (dust to dust): The ubiquity of camouflage in human experience
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