disrupting Picasso and Man Ray on the French Riviera

Speaking of shadow disruption (an addendum to the previous post), I must also recommend a fascinating documentary video that is available to watch free on the Tubi streaming video site. 

Above is a still frame from the video in which Picasso, Man Ray and their friends are shown seated beneath a tree, the shadows of which are disrupting their figures. 

The 54-minute film is called On the French Riviera with Man Ray and Picasso, and the online link is here.

chain link fence shadows as disruptive camouflage

I am tempted to call it “chain link fence camouflage” since it occurs so frequently on the tennis court on a sunny day. 

A ball is hit over the chain link fence, and in searching for it in the grass (a green ball especially) it may be difficult to see because its shape is broken up by the shadow of the fence.

It has had other names as well: “umbrella camouflage,” “garnished fish net camouflage,” “shadow disruption” and so on.

It is nothing new, and can easily be found in art history, especially in photography and in impressionist painting. But it seems that it wasn’t officially and commonly practiced until World War I. It’s use of course is now widepread.

Shown above is the cover of a special issue of Art News magazine (November 1-14, 1942), which included several articles on wartime uses of camouflage. The photograph on the cover is an optimal example of shadow disruption.

We’ve blogged about in the past, as in this post from 2016. And there is an interesting account of its use by Ellsworth Kelly (who was a wartime camoufleur) in E.C. Goossen’s book about his life and work.

Diary of British camouflage artist Solomon J. Solomon

Solomon tank camouflage scheme

There is an article from the Boston Sunday Post, dated December 24, 1922 (p. B3), titled WAR ‘CAMOUFLAGE ARTIST’ COMPLETES PORTRAIT OF BRITISH ROYAL FAMILY. It tells the story of the delayed completion of a painting of  the Coronation Luncheon at Guildhall, an event that had taken place in 1911. Its culmination was put off by World War I. The artist assigned to complete it was Solomon J. Solomon, who is described in the article as “the most famous portrait painter in Europe today.”

When the war began, Solomon assumed that it would not greatly interfere with his artistic career, but it “interrupted him absolutely” because the government soon discovered [by way of his own prompting] that he was the one man in England familiar with the art of camouflage.” He was sent to France, to learn about that country’s section de camouflage, which was under the command of Lucien-Victor Guirand de Scevola. For a time, Solomon was the head of British Army camouflage, during which he oversaw the construction of imitation dead tree observation posts, advocated the use of overhead garnished nets (the shadows of which broke up the shapes of things below), aka "umbrella camouflage," and proposed designs for tank camouflage.

Solomon was the author of one of the first books on wartime deception, titled Strategic Camouflage (London: John Murray, 1920). Earlier, he had also published The Practice of Oil Painting and Drawing (London: Seeley, 1910).

Until recently, I had not realized that there is another book about him which contains extensive excerpts from his wartime diaries. That source is Olga Somech Phillips, Solomon J. Solomon: A Memoir of Peace and War (London: Herbert Joseph, 1933). Quoted below are a few passages (pertaining to camouflage mostly) from Solomon’s diary.

[p. 127] The French observation post trees were round; I made mine oval, so that that part of them facing the Germans should appear too small for a man to ascend; this was later adopted by the French.…

It was proposed in my report that I should need the assistance of three painters. I had made up my mind about these—two scene painters about whom I would consult Mr. Joseph Harker—and a theatrical property maker…

Harker had recommended to me Oliver Bernard—a small man, very deaf, who staged the operas at Covent Garden—a good organizer. He, on his return from New York, was on the Lusitania when she was torpedoed. He was rescued from the sea. He couldn’t swim a stroke and attributed his luck to a mascot he always wore, and which—in his opinion—would safeguard him throughout the war.

[p. 134] B—— spoke of his admiration for Giron[sic] de Scevola, the head of the French camouflage, who had, after much difficulty from the French Army people, to accept the idea of camouflage…

Scevola would only accept the rank of lieutenant, but stipulated that no one should be above him. He was—and is—a fashionable Parisian portrait painter, dressed very smartly, and invariably wore white kid gloves…

[p. 143] Who says the painter can’t organize? This seemed to be a military prejudice. When an artist is composing an imaginative picture his organizing faculties are at full stretch.

[p. 149] 11th March—…Major Alexander wanted some dummy heads—these dummies were made to attract fire, so that German snipers could be located—the line of fire would be indicated by putting a small stick through the back and front holes made by the sniper’s bullet.

Hitherto, adopting the French plan, we had mounted these heads on round sticks, and Major Alexander told me that often these would tend to turn in the hand, so that the exact direction was lost. In future I mounted the heads on square sticks fitted with a square sheath with cross feet; ths could be kept firmly in place. I had modeled several heads from our men who sat for them and I became quite a decent sculptor. The clay model was cast in plaster from which moulds were taken, and the pressing of successive sheets of paper saturated with flour paste into the moulds produced a sort of Guy Fawkes mask. We turned out quite large numbers of these papier mache “Tommies” which I colored from life.

…the Secretary of the French Camouflage Corps, asked me to model him, which I did, he wanted to send a paper mache reproduction of himself to his wife at Bordeaux. This added to our stock of types.

[p. 155] Wednesday, 22nd March—Giron[sic] de Scevola invited us all to dine with him at our little hotel at Wimereux, and an excellent meal it was for so small an inn. The Frenchmen sang and made witty speeches and kept it up till quite late. I was looking forward to returning the compliment when next de Scevola came our way, but that was not to be. We artists got on well with our French confreres.

Ellsworth Kelly in relation to overhead garnished nets

Above Cover of Art News magazine (restored), November 1942, with a photograph of personnel and artillery broken up by the shadows of an overhanging net, in which canvas strips (or other materials) have been interwoven. This was widely practiced during both World Wars, and was sometimes known as "umbrella camouflage." For more information on this technique, see "Kelly and Camouflage" (p. 115) in E.C. Goossen, Ellsworth Kelly. New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1973 (as shown below). Kelly was a US Army camoufleur during WWII.

SEE ALSO

Nature, Art, and Camouflage (35 min. video talk)

Art, Women’s Rights, and Camouflage (29 min. video talk)

Embedded Figures, Art, and Camouflage (26 min. video talk)

Art, Gestalt, and Camouflage (28 min. video talk)

Women's Rights and Wedlocked Camouflage

The years prior to World War I, the war itself, and afterwards, were volatile to say the least. The Armory Show. Women's Suffrage. The most disgusting level of racism. Prohibition, and so on. What do any of these have to do with camouflage? Everything, as all these issues were entwined. Above, for example, is a newspaper cartoon (haven't located the artist's name) that was published in the Boston Globe on May 11, 1918. It's a rare, insightful comment about a certain camouflage technique. At the same time, it is also offensive to women, and plays up the pervasive subject of strife within marriage ("wedlock"). In August of the year before, an equally clever but even more virulent column appeared (as reprinted below) about the meaning of "camouflage" in relation to women's behavior toward men. Who wrote the column? In this case, we know the author's name. It was Arthur (Bugs) Baer, a prominent American humorist (it was he who referred to Babe Ruth as the "Sultan of Swat") who wrote in a style that reminds us of free association, automatic writing, with even a hint of connection to the experimental writings of Gertrude Stein.

•••

 Arthur (“Bugs”) Baer, CAMOUFLAGE. Evening World (New York). August 18, 1917, p. 3—

THIS WAR is being fought on words that ain’t in the dictionary. Old man Noah Webster knew a few spoonfuls, but he didn’t know anymore about camouflage than a hog does about Sunday. You can lamp his dictionary until you sprain an eye, but you won’t apprehend anything about camouflage in his unabridged word garage. Camouflage is a bilking industry with the libretto and music written by the French. The theory is to swindle the German’s eyes. The Frenchmen cover ‘emselves with a lot of leaves. They got the theory from Adam and Eve, but ain’t paying royalities.

After he is camouflaged up in a set of form fitting leaves, the Frenchman ankles off for a short vegetarian stroll toward the Kasier’s trenches. Some husky Boche tosses his optic toward him, but figures him out for a rhododendren bush rehearsing for a tableau vivant. First thing he knows, the rhododendron bush goes Democratic and poor old Hans is listed among the slightly killed, totally wounded or partially missing.

THE IDEA of camouflage is to gyp the enemy. Give him one five for two tens. You heard about the cowboy who called on his best girl and found her bivouacking in another cowboy’s lap. He pulled out his .45 calibre revolver to shoot the beauty spot off her false, deceiving chin, when she looks at him like page 254 of Ouida’s novels.
  
“Do you believe your dearie, or do you believe your eyes?” she piped.
 
The poor fish believed his dearie, and they got married and lived snappily ever after. She had that fool cowboy all camouflaged up with her metropolitan tongue and city ways.
 
Still, camouflage is no novelty among the unfair sex. A flapper will high heel along the macadamized turf, all ambushed up in a swarm of Djer Kiss [the flying kisses of fairies]. She will have a gang of summer furs lurking on her shoulders and a mob of paint, powder and other beauty utensils loitering on her face. She will have a complexion fairer than a Supreme Court decision. But when she gets home and starts to uncamouflage, she puts on ten years for everything she takes off. She has one of those removable complexions. By the time that she has moulted her blonde hair, shed her automatic teeth and discarded her mechanical eye, she is older than hieroglyphics, and gains every lap.
 
She has one of those folding complexions that you can carry in your handbag. The French have no monopoly on that camouflage institution. Yea bo.

UNDER THE modern regime of beauty camouflage, everything about a woman complexion is detachable except her ears.
  
There are different branches of study in the camouflage curriculum. In Washington, the Senators have oratorical camouflage down to a science. Their speciality is painting word pictures, using their chin as a brush. There isn’t a battle that the Senate can’t win with a few maxillary calisthenics. Rhetorical camouflage is great stuff, but you can’t bridge the ocean with a pontoon of words. Any union Senator with his vocal camouflagers on can build a fleet in three paragraphs or raise an army with a few chin excursions. Aesop’s jackass had the camouflage idea when he attended the zoo bal masque wearing the lion’s coat and vest, but a few chirps of his fool mule tongue gummed his camouflage.
  
The gent who disguises himself behind a camouflage of women’s skirts in order to escape military service is smaller than the Republican vote in Alabama. A guy that little can ambush himself behind a cancelled postage stamp. The slackers are utilizing a camouflage of women’s skirts, dependent relatives, conscientious objections, flat feet, weak heart and weaker knees. Which is a camouflage that fails to camouflage by quite a few flages. And a culprit who tries to hide behind a woman’s petticoats would have to pass his career in a bureau drawer. That’s where the ladies are wearing their pettiskirts. Nope, we ain’t married, but we read The Delineator [a women’s magazine at the time].

THE PARAMOUNT idea of camouflage is to create an aura of low visibility which will enable you to ramble around in safety. The chameleon has the right idea, and one that might be elaborated. For instance, a bill collector would never find you if you were camouflaged as a waste basket. All the props you need for this ambush is a loose wicker basket and a hat made of old newspapers, vacant letters and unraveled souvenir postcards. You can circumvent the heat by camouflaging yourself as a mint julep. With enough practice you can become a perfect julep. Even your wife will be unable to detect the difference on your breath.
  
By camouflaging yourself as a porcupine with a flat wheel, you can secure enough elbow space in the subway to draw in a breath edgeways once in a while. Bat as drawing in a subway breath is suicide at a nickel a ticket, this camouflage is rather intricate.
  
Peace hath her camouflages as well as war. With a lttle cranial dexterity and a few cerebral gymnastics, camouflaging can be utilized to alleviate the inconvenience of civilization.
  
There will be a camouflage for every ill.
  
Of course, in the case of the poor henpecked husband, we can paint no disguise with a brush.
  
The only camouflage will be distance. And you will have to paint that with your heels.

Below (updated 24Mar2019): Moments ago while browsing the "free photo website" of Gratisography, we ran across this photograph by Ryan McGuire which, by fortunate coincidence, uses much the same trickery as the "wedlocked" cartoon from 1918.

Photo by Ryan McGuire

New and Improved Personal Camouflage Methods

Bruce Bairnsfather (c1918)

Above A classic cartoon (c1918) of a dazzle-patterned World War I soldier by British cartoonist and humorist Bruce Bairnsfather.

•••

L.W. LOWER IS A DAB AT COLOR SCHEMES in Daily News (Perth, Western Australia), September 23, 1939, p. 21—

Camouflage classes have been started in the Eastern States [of Australia]. We need them here.

The idea of camouflage is to convince observers that you are not where you are, and not even in any place where you're not.

This will apply mostly to buildings and other structures.

But personal camouflage is another matter.

It will be advisable for citizens to carry a variety of paint pots with them.

For ordinary street wear all that is needed is a pot of paint the same color as the pavement.

At the first sign of danger, the head should be plunged into the paint pot, thus deluding the enemy.

Green paint should be poured over the upper portion of the body when one is in a park.

The addition of a dahlia on top of the head will help.

Motors will find it a simple matter to paint the back of a cow on the roof of cars.

A simpler method is to carry an umbrella which looks from the top like a street man-hole.

All you have to do is to sit in the roadway under the umbrella and look like the entrance to a drain.

To make the thing more realistic you should also feel like the entrance to a drain.

In the meantime I am going to persuade the local publican to allow me to use his cellar as an air-raid shelter, starting from today.

He doesn't seem too willing to collaborate, so far.

Stripes, Checked Suits and Camouflage La Bohème

Anon, cover photograph of The Sketch (1919)

Above This photograph (attributed to the Western Newspaper Union) was published on the front cover of The Sketch magazine in London on Wednesday, June 18, 1919 (No 1377 Vol CVL). The headline beneath it reads DISPLAYING HER 'STRIPES," BUT HIDING HER HEAD: ZEBRA EFFECTS IN HOSIERY AND PARASOL. A clarifying caption states—

The vogue of the stripe—which has affinities, perhaps, with the new "dazzle" designs born of naval camouflage—is very prevalent among the votaries of summer fashions. Here is an example, which was carried out in blue and white, from the other side of the Atlantic. It would turn a tiger or a zebra green with envy.

While it is tempting to say that stripes and other high contrast optical patterns were caused by the adoption of dazzle ship camouflage during World War I, there are also reasons to conclude that the practice is quite a bit older than that. There is a section related to this in Virginia Nicholson, Among the Bohemians: Experiments in Living 1900-1939 (New York: HarperCollins, 2002), pp. 151-152—

[If one were on the lookout for Bohemian artists, a telltale attribute would be] an ostentatious pair of checked trousers or a checked suit, which cropped up like the measles wherever artists gathered together. These dazzling checkerboards of Op art squares danced down the legs of poets, painters and poseurs from Chelsea to Paris. Paul Nash dashed off an illustration to [Dora] Carrington, showing himself squared up like a bistro tablecloth. "I have just got a check suit that will stagger humanity. My word it is a check suit." They were really very loud—the point being, that nobody could mistake you in a crowd. The Punch cartoonist who wanted to depict a Bohemian artist invariably tricked out his legs in check. When he became more confident, [Mark] Gertler wore them instead of evening clothes, while the painter Michael Wickham teamed his with an orange-sprigged waistcoat. [Walter] Sickert got himself to look like a bookie in checks and a bowler. Evelyn Waugh overdrew at the bank to purchase a pair of checked trousers in 1925, and Dylan Thomas dressed in loud check suits because the thought they made him look like a successful scriptwriter. My father, Quentin Bell [of Bloomsbury Group fame], used to wear blue and white checked trousers bought from a cooks' outfitters in Old Compton Street, but the pattern gradually disappeared beneath incrustations of plaster.

Camouflage Through Purposeful Shadow Disruption

Paul Strand, Porch Shadows (1916)

Above Photograph by Paul Strand, titled Porch Shadows (1916)•. Courtesy Library of Congress. Public domain.

Strand was one of a number of photographers before and after World War I who relied on a well-known shadow effect that resembles the patterns of venetian blinds. Other examples are easily found, notably in the photographs of Max Dupain••, Harold Cazneaux, Alexander Rodchenko, and Laszlo Moholy Nagy.

As mentioned in an earlier post, disruptive shadow effects are also frequently found in paintings in the latter part of the 19th century, especially Impressionist. Among the most compelling is John Singer Sargent's masterful Breakfast in the Loggia (1910), which is reproduced below.

John Singer Sargent, Breakfast in the Loggia (1910)

In the early years of World War I, military camoufleurs began to apply disruptive patterns to vehicles and other equipment, to purposely break up their shapes. Soon after (probably as a consequence of a proposal by British painter and camouflage officer Solomon J. Solomon), it became evident that disruptive patterns can also result from the shadow effects of the overhead sun. Nets suspended overhead, garnished with scraps of fabric, could break up any components below, without applying any paint. We've talked about this earlier as umbrella camouflage.

Of course, this was nothing new. Today the same effect is seen on a tennis court, when the shadows of the chain link fence break up the shape of a lost ball in the grass. In an issue of the Illustrated London News (August 31, 1918, p. 233), this disruptive shadow effect was demonstrated in a photograph (shown below) of a group of soldiers inspecting a supply of ammunition, stored beneath a garnished net.

At the end of the war, non-military examples of shadow disruption were published in an issue of The Sketch (May 22, 1919, p. 209), with the headline: SUN PICTURES! LIGHT EFFECTS IN A FEZ BAZAAR: A Picturesque Network Effect of Light and Shade: Interesting French Photographs of a Covered Market at Fez. One example is shown below.

Finally, it is only fitting to conclude with one of the best-known photographs of shadow distruption (below) by the Russian Constructivist Alexander Rodchenko, titled Girl with a Leica (c1933).

• There is some disagreement about the proper orientation of Paul Strand's photograph. Should it be in vertical format, as shown here, or should it be horizontal instead, with the circular table in the upper right corner? It is most commonly reproduced as a vertical.
•• Australian art historian Ann Elias has written extensively on Max Dupain and the purposeful use of shadows in photography and camouflage.

Scandalous Dazzle Camouflage Swimsuits 1919

Above As we've discussed in earlier posts, much fun was had by pundits and the public in 1919 when young British women began to appear on the beach in Margate, in swimsuits based on wartime dazzle camouflage schemes. We've published news photographs of a few of these before, but of late have located clearer, more detailed examples. The one shown above and two versions of another one (below) were widely published at the time by various European, Australian and American news sources, Le Modes, The Sketch and New York Tribune among them.

We also discovered a wonderful pen and ink drawing (artist unknown, with credit to the Daily Paper) that appeared in a mid-1919 issue of The Sketch, as reproduced below. It shows a well-fed beach custodian, looking in amazement at three women in dazzle camouflage swimsuits. Beneath the headline of "DAZZLE" DAYS is the following caption—

Even the bathing costume has been reborn by the war, and camouflage is the order of the day. 

 

Ann Elias on Camouflage and Max Dupain

Online article by Ann Elias

Art historian Ann Elias, the author of the online article linked below is an Associate Professor of Theoretical Enquiry at the Sydney College of the Arts, The University of Sydney, in Australia. In the coming week, she will also be co-hosting, with Nicholas Tsoutas, a major international conference on camouflage, called Camouflage Cultures: Surveillance, Communities, Aesthetics, Animals.
 
Max Dupain and Frank Hinder are among the many significant artists who contributed decisively to Australia's modernist tradition. Less well known, however, is that they both worked for Australia's military during the Second World War. >>>more

WWI Umbrella Camouflage

Disruptive shadows in a Spanish street festival (c1909)

For whatever reason, there was increased interest in the disruptive effects of shadows among photographers, painters and other artists near the close of the 19th century. This is especially evident in the paintings of certain European and American painters. See for example, John Singer Sargent's Breakfast on the Loggia or The Hermit. In some cases, no doubt it was inspired by patterns of disruption in the protective coloration of animals, as confirmed by demonstrations by Abbott H. Thayer and others. During World War I, comparable techniques were adopted for concealing from aerial observation personnel and equipment on the ground.

According to James E. Edmonds (in History of the Great War, Vol 1, London: Macmillan, 1932, pp. 83-84), “Concealment from the air was first attempted by the use of canvas sheets painted to represent the ground as seen from an airplane. Experience proved these to be heavy to erect and difficult to maintain in position. On the suggestion of Mr. [Solomon J.] Solomon, they were replaced by a lighter and more manageable article [called “umbrella camouflage” or "garnished nets"], in the form of old fish nets or wire netting, garnished with tufts of painted or dyed raffia (gardener’s bast). For the Somme thousands of rolls of wire netting were supplied to the divisional engineers who, when raffia was lacking, wove grass into it. In the course of time all batteries were equipped with these overhead covers. As the demand increased and the supply of raffia became inadequate, canvas strips were substituted for it, and were found to be less flammable.”

But apparently long before the war, there was a civilian tradition of doing more or less the same, as shown here by this photograph from a 1909 issue of The Strand Magazine (p. 719) of a Spanish street festival. Submitted by Edmund Pöhler of Barcelona, the article states: "This strange effect, produced by sunshine and shade, is a common scene in Spanish towns, where, once every year, about eight days are set apart as the Fiesta Major (Grand Holidays). During this period each district vies with its neighbor in adorning the streets. Dancing at night to the music of hired musicians, under the fantastic canopy overhead, illuminated by the many lights of every open window and door, invites one and all to participate in the gaiety and animation of the scene."