Showing posts with label zoologists. Show all posts
Showing posts with label zoologists. Show all posts
Monday, February 3, 2025
Otto von Frisch / Nature, Animal Camouflage & Design
Sunday, December 17, 2023
Camouflage? Nope, just spots on a performing dog
Like a weird dream of a camouflage artist, Chang-Lee appears here, standing on his hind legs in one of the tricks of his extensive repertoire. But those spots were’not painted on Chang-Lee. They just grew on this novelty hairless canine from far-off Indo-China, making a friendly call in this country.
Friday, August 18, 2023
Art and Camouflage books / discount and free shipping
“[False Colors]
is the definitive text on, but also the best possible introduction to,
the 'social history' of military camouflage and the key role that
artists played in its development. Roy Behrens writes beautifully and
with complete authority. As a biologist, this is the book that broadened
my horizons from an academic interest in animal camouflage to the
broader context in which contemporary theories of camouflage evolved.” —Innes Cuthill, Professor of Behavioral Ecology, University of Bristol.
“[Behrens’ False Colors
is] simply the best all-around introductory book on camouflage…it is
perfect for beginners and a finishing school for veteran camoufleurs.” —Barton Whaley, military deception expert [2013].
“[Behrens’] book False Colors provides a brilliant overview of the subject [of art and camouflage].” —Art Historian Henry Adams, in Art and Antiques [2011].
Tuesday, June 20, 2023
patterns in nature as sources of camouflage design
Jean-Philippe Lenclos, as interviewed in Supergraphics: transforming space: graphic design for walls, buildings and spaces. London: Unit Editions, 2010, p. 293—
Crazy Lace Agate (Pixabay)
Q: Your work has alway encompassed strong graphic elements, where does this interest come from?
A: From the start of my studies at the École Boulle, I was fascinated by the graphic elements I found in the urban landscape, such as signs and road markings on the street. The broad stripes used in road markings, for example, are graphical elements that I admired: despite their extreme simplification, I liked their strength of expression. Furthermore, we would go to the aquariums in Paris to draw all sorts of strange fish, which, by their colors and their fabulous “graphism,” made me aware of the extreme freedom of patterns on their bodies. Similarly, the rhythms and forms found on the surfaces of minerals and plants have always inspired artistic creation. | have always observed my surroundings. This brings us also to camouflage used in military hardware. All these observations are at the source of my own research and contribute to a visual mythology that has fed my work.
Bark mimic moth (Pixabay)
Sunday, October 30, 2022
Abbott Thayer and Concealing Coloration / Dublin NH
•••
Excerpted from L.W. Leonard and J.L. Seward, The History of Dublin NH. Published by the Town of Dublin, 1920, pp. 684-686—
Throughout the world the word “camouflage” has become familiar during the war. Although this word is of French origin, the thing itself is primarily an American creation, the work neither of warriors nor army experts, but of a distinguished artist, a well-known Dublin resident, Abbott H. Thayer, who has permanently lived here for more than twenty-five years.
In 1896, an essay by Mr. Thayer on “The Law Which Underlies Protective Coloration,” was published in The Auk, and shortly afterwards reprinted in the Year Book of the Smithsonian Institution. In 1909, the Macmillans published Concealing-coloration in the Animal Kingdom, written by Abbott H. Thayer’s son, Gerald H. Thayer, and illustrated by father and son.
Protective coloration, as set forth in this book, was one of the main starting points of camouflage, and to a considerable extent has guided its development. Assurance of these facts were given Mr. Thayer in England and Scotland in the winter of 1915-16, when he went abroad to tender the Allies’ more direct help in this matter.
Professor [Sir William Abbott] Herdman of the University of Liverpool, suggested that the naturalists of Great Britain ought to sign a joint statement to the effect that they believed Mr. Thayer’s unique knowledge of protective coloration could be made of the greatest use to the War Department. It proved, however, that, owing to the efforts of several other British scientists, notably Professor J. Graham Kerr of Cambridge and the University of Glasgow, who had even urged that the government create a special bureau for the adoption of Thayer’s discoveries, “concealing coloration” was already doing war service of various kinds, both on land and sea.
Camouflage has carried the principles of visual deception to hitherto undreamed-of lengths of application, and to manifold and divergent new developments.
But the latest military camouflage was mainly a matter of masking batteries and guns for airplane detection. Standardized materials, wire netting, colored shreds of burlap, etc., manufactured in vast quantities behind the lines were the main dependence for this roofing-over and screening of guns. The latest marine camouflage, again, sought not concealment of ships, but effects of distortion of outline and perspective which would puzzle the U-boat observers looking through the periscope, as to the vessel’s speed, distance, exact form, and especially her course, or direction of movement.
Professor E. B. Poulton, F. R. S., etc., President of the Linnean Society of London, the distinguished English evolutionist, writes as follows:
“During the sixty years which have elapsed since the historic day [of the reading before the Linnean Society of Darwin’s and Wallace’s joint essay on Natural Selection], English-speaking workers—among the foremost the American artist-naturalist, Abbott H. Thayer, and his son Gerald H. Thayer—have studied this principle [protective coloration], continually extending it by the discovery of fresh applications, and analysing it into a whole group of cooperating principles; but inspite of all these naturalists have done, it required the Great War and a misused French word in order to arrest the attention of their fellow-countrymen…
We may, however, forgive the inccurate use of a new word which the war has bought into our language because of the attention which has now been focused upon a most interesting subject—attention which rightly demands a new and widely accessible edition of this work [Thayers’ Concealing Coloration]. Here are clearly explained and illustrated the principles underlying the art of camouflage, practiced by nature from time immemorial but in some of its main lines only made known to man by the discoveries of Abbott H. Thayer.”
Saturday, October 29, 2022
Thayer's camouflage of William James' Norfolk jacket
Later, early in World War I, Thayer used that same jacket as a way to demonstrate how fabric scraps (rags) and his wife's discarded stockings might be attached to its surface, to break the continuity of the figure. By superimposing the one photograph on top of the other, I am trying to "prove" that the person in the photograph in the center and on the right (unidentified when published) is in fact Abbott Thayer himself, with a painted face, wearing that Norfolk jacket.
•••
Be warned that the story below is full of inaccuracies. Thayer submitted a ship camouflage proposal (based on countershading) to the US Government during the Spanish-American War (not WWI), but asked for too much money. I have never seen any indication that he was asked, during WWI, “to guide a Navy program.” He did attempt (ineptly) to persuade the British to adopt disruptively patterned infantry uniforms—but his prototype was literally made (as shown above) partly of rags and worn-out womens' hose.
•••
Ernest Henderson, The World of “Mr. Sheraton.” New York: Popular Library, 1962, p. 83—
When World War I was raging, deceptive markings to disguise merchant ships falling prey to German torpedoes became a matter of national necessity. To meet this grave emergency, Dublin’s [NH] great naturalist [artist Abbott H. Thayer] was offered an impressive financial inducement to guide a Navy program for confusing the enemy with camouflage. Despite a threatening spector of poverty, Thayer flatly declined. It would mean a military role, and this his conscience would not then permit.
Subsequently, as the fever of war increased, realizing that human lives were involved, Thayer offered the British a new type of uniform designed to render soldiers partially invisible. This the British promptly rejected, concluding, no doubt, that fitting their men with unbecoming rags could injure national morale even more than could a mere reduction in the deadliness of approaching German bullets.
Abbott Handerson Thayer / the master at his very best
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| Abbott H. Thayer (c1915) |
•••
Ernest Henderson, The World of “Mr. Sheraton.” New York: Popular Library, 1962, pp. 82-83—
Another Dublin [NH] resident was the artist and naturalist Abbott H. Thayer, considered by many the discoverer of protective coloration. While still in my teens, I saw a demonstration of his skill. He had produced a piece of stone carved to resemble a duck. Painted to match the roadway, the object had a dark brown back, with much lighter colors on its belly.
In broad daylight Thayer placed the duck, supported by a stiff wire, in the roadway and led me twenty paces away. Turning, I was sure the object had vanished; nothing was visible at all. A few paces nearer, and the wire could be seen—absolutely nothing else. Another few paces, and the duck began to take form. Yes, Abbott Thayer had indeed mastered nature’s private secret for deceiving the human eye.
Sunday, October 23, 2022
Abbott Handerson Thayer / family collection website
Also posted is a list of recent Thayer exhibitions, and a free downloadable pdf of the full-color, 68-page exhibition catalog, edited by Ari Post, titled Abbott Handerson Thayer: A Beautiful Law of Nature (2013), which includes three essays, by William Kloss, Martin Stevens, and myself. See also my recent 30-minute video talk on the same subject.
Monday, December 27, 2021
new article on camouflage in current issue of MUSE
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| Camouflage article in MUSE Magazine (2022) |
Published by Cricket Media, which began in the 1970s with the well-known children’s magazine called Cricket, the publication’s subtitle is Science and Exploration for Inquisitive Minds. Elsewhere, the magazine is characterized as an “arts and science magazine for kids from 9 to 14 that’s spot on with the facts, but off-kilter with the jokes.”
This particular article was written by Elizabeth Tracy, and is illustrated by a wide range of military and zoological examples, including dazzle ship camouflage, and the contributions of American women during World War I.
We ourselves were pleased by the opportunity to serve as a research consultant as the text was being prepared, and to assist in assembling the article’s illustrations.
RELATED LINKS
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 / Optical science meets visual art / Disruption versus dazzle / Chicanery and conspicuousness / Under the big top at Sims' circus
Thursday, December 23, 2021
Zoologist Hugh B. Cott and WWII camouflaged cannon
Also shown here is a World War II photograph that documents a demonstration by Cott. It shows two camouflaged cannon, one of which is disruptively painted, while the second is countershaded. The disrupted cannon is easily seen. It is nearly dead center of the photograph, positioned on the railroad track, and pointing toward the upper left. By following the track toward the upper right, you can see the second (countershaded) cannon, the barrel of which is all but invisible.•••
OTHER WAYS TO APPLY CAMOUFLAGE in The Des Moines News (Des Moines IA), August 15, 1918, p. 4—
Wouldn’t be a bad idea for gents to camouflage their eyes so they’ll look wide open for Sunday mornings in church.
•••
Try the Camouflage on These
On the piano next door that’s hopped every time you try to rest. Break in some time when they’re away and camouflage it to look like an umbrella stand, or a fireplace.
Too bad, too, there isn’t any way to camouflage the warbling of that oh, ho. ho, ha, ha, hee, hee, damsel who thinks she’s Mrs. Caruso.
And that bugle practicing kid across the street. The best way is to camouflage the bugle with an ax.
The auto that’s always kicking up a fuss and is always being repaired and tried out when you’re trying to get full weight on your sleep at night and in the morning. Sneak out some midnight, drag it in to alley and camouflage it to look like a pile of garbage, then push it next to the ash can so the garbage chauffeur will haul it away with the rest of the rubbish.
Wonders can be worked with the camouflage art.
•••
Camouflage Some More
What a merry bunch of camouflagers we are. The first of the month when bills come and collectors knuckle the front door, some of us are camouflage so that we are out to the collector.
Some camouflage themselves so that the other people just envy their easy sailing and wish they could afford a car and a maid, but most of the time the car isn’t paid for and the house is mortgaged to get it and they just have their head out of the water when it’s calm. Great stuff, this camouflage.
Restaurant hash is another gag that gets camouflaged to a frazzle.
Gristle, leftover meat from uneaten orders, etc., come under the nom de plume of “choice bits.” Water is another article that’s camouflaged muchly, as milk, oyster stew, circus leomade, and many other fine works.
For a video introduction to countershading, see <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZLX5YQF-H3k>
Wednesday, August 25, 2021
latest new renditions of dazzle-painted British ships
Above Here are a few of our favorites from the latest vector interpretations of WWI British ship camouflage, part of an on-going project by Steve Morris, a Washington DC-area graphic designer and toy maker. These are simply astonishing. You can find many more, clearer and at larger size, at his website. What a remarkable undertaking.
WWI ship diagrams / Steve Morris
We recently told the story of the involvement of American women during WWI in the application of a dazzle camouflage pattern to a land-based US Navy recruiting station, the USS Recruit, built to closely resemble a ship. For publicity purposes, the wooden imitation ship (located in the midst of all the traffic at Union Square in New York City) was painted in a colorful scheme in one day and overnight by the Women's Reserve Camouflage Corps. Learn more, see more about women's wartime contributions in this new online video (high resolution version).
Thursday, August 5, 2021
New video / Art, Women's Rights, and Camouflage
Sunday, July 18, 2021
Free online video / The Hidden Story of Camouflage
I am now in process of producing my own series of shorter videos on related subjects. Here is my very first attempt, as posted on YouTube. I'm working on my second today.
Sunday, April 18, 2021
oh dear dear der goose dung all over der trouserz
Most recently and of particular note is Life in Color with David Attenborough, which premiered some weeks ago on BBC, and will be streaming on Netflix as of Thursday, April 22. This new series is of particular relevance to those who research camouflage, because it uses the latest filming techniques to determine how the vision of various animals differs from that of humans. This is especially important because it has all too often been assumed that animal coloration can be adequately assessed through human vision. It is a “must see” series.
In the meantime, British zoologist Martin Stevens, whose books on animal coloration (Animal Camouflage; Sensory Ecology, Behavior, and Evolution; and Cheats and Deceits) are among the very finest, has teamed up with Attenborough and the BBC to produce a dazzling, full-color companion volume titled Life in Color: How Animals See the World.
That said, one can hardly mention David Attenborough without also calling to mind that wonderful story in his autobiography about a “colorful” appearance by Konrad Lorenz on an earlier BBC program. It is a classic, as quoted below.
•••
David Attenborough, Life on Air. London: BBC Books, 2002—
[During a live interview on BBC, Austrian ethologist Konrad Lorenz agreed to appear on camera, unrehearsed, with a greylag goose. Moments later,] a keeper from the London Zoo walked on to the set carrying a goose which he put down on a low table that stood between the professor and myself. The goose, naturally enough, was somewhat perturbed at suddenly being thrust under the bright televison lights and began to flap its wings.
“Komm, komm, mein Liebchen,” said Konrad, soothingly, putting his hands on either side of the goose’s body so that its wings were held folded down. He was holding it so that its head was pointed away from him. This was sensible in that he was not then within range of the goose’s beak which it showed every wish to use, if it got the chance. But that, of course, meant that its rear was pointing towards the professor and the goose, in the flurry, squirted a jet of liquid green dung straight at him.
“Oh dear dear,” said Konrad. “All over der trouserz.” He released the goose, which flapped off the set and was neatly fielded by its keeper, took out his handkerchief and carefully wiped his trousers clean. Then, finding his handerchief in his hand, in his embarrassment, he promptly blew his nose on it.
He completed the interview with a green smear down the side of his face…
Tuesday, April 14, 2020
Harrison S. Morris | His memories of Abbott H. Thayer
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| Harrison S. Morris |
•••
Harrison S. Morris, Confessions in Art. New York: Sears Publishing, 1930, pp. 142-144—
It was he [Abbott H. Thayer] and George de Forest Brush who, I believe, first thought of camouflage for ships at sea. They had pondered much and experimented much over the scientific problems of light and color, even outside the uses of pigment. They were among those to whom art brings ripened intellect, like Morse and Fulton, inventors who revolutionized the world's methods of contact.
So when we were in the war with Spain, Brush and Thayer disinterestedly went to Washington and offered their services and discoveries to the Secretary of the Navy. Of course, he was skeptical, as official life always is of change. He wanted to know, you know, and all that sort of thing. But while he was deliberating, and telling perhaps why the scheme was no good, one of the painters stuck in the ground a slender stick which he held in his hand, painted after their theory of protective coloration. Then Brush alluded and pointed in the course of conversation to the stick before them. To the Secretary of the Navy, there was no stick in sight. He went on speaking his conventional thought. But quietly and as if accidentally one of the painters turned the slender stick around in its place, so that the sun touched it another way, and, would you believe it, there was the stick which the Secretary could not see.
I rather think nothing came of the offer in the day of the Spanish War. But we know vividly enough what came of it later, and what ships and lives were saved by the wisdom of the two incomparable artists who thus could coordinate their art to the uses of life.
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| Thayer holding one of his duck decoys upsidedown |
And another time, so Brush tells me, Thayer was invited to lecture on his theories of color before a Royal Institution of Science in London. He had before him on the platform a table on which was visible a decoy duck of wood such as sportsmen use in gunning. In his address, he alluded much to these ducks before him, and as well before the audience. At last, the patience of one of the English pundits could stand this no longer. He got up in some irritation at the offense to his intellect of speaking of ducks when there was only one duck in view. Would the learned gentleman be pleased to explain why he referred to ducks, thus plural, when there was only one duck in sight? He sat down well satisfied with exposing an American impostor who didn't know how to use the English language.
Thayer then gave a quick twist to a wooden duck, made invisible by his coloring, and the second bird was exposed in all its solidity. So was the English skeptic.
Sunday, April 5, 2020
Theatrical special effects | Thayer's disappearing man
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| Abbott H. Thayer holding one of his duck decoys (upsidedown) |
A Harvard graduate, MacKaye traveled and lived in Europe from 1897 to 1900, then returned to the US to teach at a private school in New York. In 1904, he moved to Cornish NH (ten miles from Plainfield), where he was allied with the Cornish Art Colony, which included such prominent artists as Augustus Saint-Gaudens, Maxfield Parrish, Daniel Chester French, Paul Manship, George de Forest Brush, and Barry Faulkner.
Sixty-five miles southeast of Cornish is Dublin NH, at the foot of Mount Monadnock. At the time, there was considerable contact between the artists in Cornish and Dublin, in part because the latter was the location of the disheveled home and studio of artist-naturalist Abbott Handerson Thayer (the so-called “father of camouflage”). Faulkner was Thayer’s cousin, Brush was his closest friend, and some of the artists mentioned above were his long-time associates.
Only lately have I learned that Thayer and Percy MacKaye were also acquainted, possibly well-acquainted, and, in 1906, they made an attempt to collaborate on the “special effects” for the staging of Edward H. Sothern and Julia Marlowe’s 1907 production of MacKaye’s play about Joan of Arc, titled Jeanne d’Arc. The playscript was dedicated to Augustus Saint-Gaudens.
In the script, Jeanne d’Arc reveals that she has been visited by St Michael the Archangel. In a couple of scenes, “the glorified form of St Michael” appears as an apparition, then disappears. At a certain point, the ghostly form of Charles the Great (aka Charlemagne) appears within a stained glass surface, then speaks with the voice of St Michael. Obviously, anyone producing the play would need to decide how to handle these ethereal appearances (and vanishing acts) of Jeanne's visions of St Michael.
As early as the mid-1890s, Abbott Thayer had been researching, writing about, and devising demonstrations of a natural form of camouflage called countershading (essentially inverse shading). He claimed that it accounted for the prevalence of “white undersides” in the coloration of animals.
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| Thayer's disappearing duck (as recreated by Fuertes) |
Using wooden duck decoys, as seen in the photographs above (or even raw sweet potatoes), he could make solid forms all but vanish in a natural ground surrounding. (In these two photographs, made by Thayer's student, Louis Agassiz Fuertes, a white sheet of paper has been placed behind the duck decoys to make the counter-shaded one visible, on the right.) Scientific audiences were astonished by his outdoor demonstrations of this. He published articles about countershading in scientific journals, and it led to his being invited to European universities to demonstrate and to install exhibitions of the same phenomenon.
Thayer was inept at managing money. But when his discovery of countershading (sometimes known as Thayer’s law) was received so laudably, he began to imagine practical ways by which he and his family could profit. One of his options had to do with theatrical stage effects. Instead of vanishing duck decoys, could countershading be applied to an actor’s skin-toned leotards, and then, by a simple switch of the lights, might the actor disappear?
We know that Thayer actually carried this out because two photographs of the effect have survived (as reproduced below). They are before-and-after photographs of a male artist’s model (a Boston man named Dutton) wearing counter-shaded tights, in the setting of a lighted box. In one, the light is coming from the bottom (contrary to natural lighting), in which case the figure is easily seen. In the other photograph, the light is coming from the top, and the model all but disappears.
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| Thayer's vanishing actor in counter-shaded leotards |
In 1906, as Percy MacKaye was preparing for the premiere of Jeanne d’Arc, he may have reached out to Thayer—more likely Thayer appealed to him—about the possibility of using on-stage countershading as a way to bring about the appearance and disappearance of St Michael. We know this in part because MacKaye described it in Percy MacKaye: A Sketch of His Life with Bibliography of His Works (Cambridge MA: Harvard University, 1922). Here is the passage—
Midwinter, in the little town hall of Dublin NH: a man-model against a dusky curtain: Abbott Thayer, the artist-inventor, intent, excited, testing (in 1906!) his new “camouflage” principles to create a stained-glass vision of Charlemagne for the Sothern-Marlowe production of my play Jeanne d’Arc.
But did their collaborative efforts succeed? The answer is no: In the end, their project came to naught. There are letters from Thayer to MacKaye in the Archives of American Art that record his frantic if genuine efforts to locate appropriate lanterns and to photograph the model in tights. On March 26, 1906, he sent photographs to MacKaye (perhaps the same two reproduced here), saying: “When Dutton got his suit on again, and took his place, the effect was almost as perfect as ever, quite enough without a single retouch (but the lantern’s the thing!)” A full month later, on April 26, he assured MacKaye that he has made “progress, but only that,” and is awaiting a shipment of new and better lanterns, which, he hopefully asserts, “will make a true total invisibility.”
There is apparently more to the story, but the details remain rather murky. In the files of the Archives of American Art, there is another letter to MacKaye (dated May 25), written by Emma Thayer, on behalf of Abbott, her husband. She reveals that Thayer is overwhelmed, and instead—
he has got that gifted young man [his student] Rockwell Kent (whom Abbott wanted before and could not) to do the thing. Abbott has had him up here, and Abbott says he will do it superbly. But to make sure Abbott is having him do the only complicated thing, the St Michael, first and if he has any difficulty he is to telegraph Abbott, and Abbott will go down.
Rockwell Kent is swiftness itself—and having more endurance can do the thing quicker than Abbott, and is masterly and precise in the way he does everything.
Despite such good intentions, Thayer and Kent were not able to provide a final prototype for the Sothern and Marlowe production. “Unable to get [it] together in time,” according to Thayer’s biographer, Nelson C. White, the collaborative experiment concluded “in complete failure.”
Soon after, Thayer came to realize the futility of making a fortune by inventing practical things. As he wrote to his patron, Charles L. Freer (as quoted by White)—
My failure to make my cursed invention suit itself to Sothern’s immediate needs was the eye-opener I need. I had gone on thinking the Thayer family must have the thousands I was to scoop so easily so as to set me free to work. My eyes opened for good and all and although the thing got into such perfected shape that it seems both to me and my patent lawyer destined for success, nothing will divert another thought from my own work [as an artist], which envelops me like the arms of a beloved again…
…P.P.S. The theatre invention is all ready for someone to take up, patent applied for and covered already in four foreign lands. If the right man looms up within a year or two he shall have it. Otherwise, it can go to hell. I am safe cured!
•••
Updates
The above was posted only three days ago, but I've just found two updates, including one that's especially surprising: (1) From a news article about a talk that Gerald H. Thayer gave in 1921 in Lowell MA (Lowell Sun, January 20) it appears that he showed the lantern slides of the model who vanished in his leotards. In the article, the space in which the man is posed is described as a "piano box" (a box for shipping pianos), set up in the Dublin NH town hall. (2) Today, I found out that the autobiography of psychologist Michael Wertheimer, the son of Gestalt psychologist Max Wertheimer, has been published in Europe. I couldn't resist buying a digital copy, as expensive as it was. When I paged through it, I was completely aghast to discover that Michael's first wife's grandfather (her mother's father) was—you guessed it—Percy MacKaye. See photo below—I do love these hidden links.
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| Percy MacKaye |
RELATED LINKS
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 / Optical science meets visual art / Disruption versus dazzle / Chicanery and conspicuousness / Under the big top at Sims' circus
SALE book bundle / free shipping
Saturday, March 28, 2020
Only spurious resemblance—or is it natural mimicry
It is widely claimed, for example, that monarch butterflies are unpalatable to birds, which learn to avoid them. As a consequence, there are other monarch look-alikes, non-toxic and otherwise harmless, that are also avoided by birds. American artist Abbott Handerson Thayer, who collaborated with his artist-naturalist son, Gerald Thayer, in 1909 on a major book about animal coloration, was doubtful of Batesian mimicry. Although the concept is mentioned more than thirty times in the Thayers’ 260-page opus, their references differ considerably from the meaning that Bates had intended. Thayer’s skepticism about the link between unpalatability and mimicry was sufficient that he took a trip to the West Indies, where various mimics of monarchs are found. “He actually tasted them,” recalled his daughter Gladys, who traveled with him, “and could find no difference in the flavor.”
In the case of the lantern fly or peanut bug, it is thought to make use of mimetic resemblance in two ways: One is that, if startled, it responds by unfurling its bottom wings, revealing large, conspicuous eyespots or ocelli (as seen in the top illustration), and emitting a “foul-smelling substance.” The other, less convincing way in which it may benefit from mimicry is found in the puzzling shape of its snout (as shown in the photograph above), which certainly looks like a peanut, but which some scientists also claim might easily be mistaken for the head of a snake, a lizard, or even an alligator.
Examples like these inevitably bring up the question of which instances of “mimicry” are not mimicry at all, but are merely the result of projections on the part of the viewer, such as occurs in our sightings of Rohrschach ink-blots, images in the clouds, or pictures of Christ on tortillas. Arthur Koestler spoke of this in The Act of Creation (pp. 375-376)—
Pliny recounted the anecdote of an artist who tried in vain to paint the foam at a dog’s mouth until, in exasperation, he threw a spongeful of paint at the canvas—and there was the foam. The story reappears in Leonardo’s Treatise on Paintings—where he makes “our Botticelli” say that if you just throw a sponge at a wall, it will “leave a blot where one sees a fine landscape.”
Tuesday, November 5, 2019
Blend and Dazzle | Art of Camouflage in PRINT 1991
Friday, September 27, 2019
Rockwell Kent | ship camouflage cover reconstructed
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| Rockwell Kent (1918), magazine cover (restored) |
I had seen all three before, but the one of particular interest to me was the cover of the December 1918 issue of Everybody’s Magazine. Near the lower-right corner is the artist’s printed signature “Kent.” The cover artist was Rockwell Kent (1882-1971), the well-known American artist, illustrator, and author (see his edition of Melville’s Moby Dick, and his illustrated autobiography, It’s Me, O Lord).
I first saw his camouflage-themed magazine cover (as I recall) in the late 1990s, when an art historian named Jake Wien (who has written about Kent and others) shared a small-size, low-resolution photograph of a copy he had found. It appeared to be in poor shape, with major surface damage and tattered edges. I later found that its color was substantially different from the one that Schiller reproduced. The color cast of Wien’s copy (as shown below, on left) is emphatically green, while the one in Schiller’s post (below, right) was blue. The other colors are consistent, which may suggest that the printing ink used for the background was fugitive and that one of the copies had been altered by years of exposure to light. If so, the question remains: Was the original background blue or green? Given the well-worn condition of the one that Jake Wien shared, I would guess the original color was blue.
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| Rockwell Kent magazine cover (two copies, same issue) |
Whatever it must be a very rare item. It is possible that no other copies have survived. Over the years, I’ve looked for the issue repeatedly on online vintage magazine sites, in searchable archives, and in library holdings. Probably one of the reasons for its scarcity is that university libraries (maybe most of them) tended to discard the covers of magazine issues before they were bound as a volume. So, in the library that I mostly use, the inside pages of Everybody’s Magazine are intact, but the covers of all of the issues are gone. Fortunately, I recently found a black-and-white scan of the cover and was able to use that as a point of departure in an attempt to digitally reconstruct the full-color cover (as shown above). I chose to use blue as the background. Note that the title in the masthead is restored from the original, but the issue date and price (and Kent's signature) have been replaced with a new, if appropriate, typeface.
That Rockwell Kent would have created an illustration of ship camouflage is of particular interest because (as I’ve discussed in earlier posts), he had been a student of Abbott Handerson Thayer, and a close friend of Thayer’s son, artist and naturalist Gerald Handerson Thayer, both of whom are credited with important early findings about protective coloration in nature. In 1909, the Thayers co-produced (with Gerald as the author of record) a major book on the subject, titled Concealing Coloration in the Animal Kingdom. It had an abundance of illustrations, including collaborative paintings by a handful of Thayers’ family members, students, and friends, one of whom was Rockwell Kent.
Saturday, May 4, 2019
Explaining Camouflage to Welsh Cub Scouts in 1919
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| Poster © Roy R. Behrens 2019 |
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Milford Haven Cub [Scout] Notes in Haverfordwest and Milford Haven Telegraph (Wales), July 9, 1919—
A Talk about Camouflage
I suppose a good number of you Cubs have heard the word “Camouflage”? These big words puzzle some of the older folk sometimes, and when they see a word which they do not understand, they go and look for a book called a “dictionary” which explains the meaning.
Deceiving the Enemy
When the word “camouflage” was first brought to the public notice, people wondered what it meant.
We people who live near the coast soon found out what “camouflage” meant. At first we saw most peculiar painted ships, and as you looked at them, you could imagine they represented all kinds of wild animals. To look at them in the distance, they did not look like ships, and really it was puzzling, and when we turned to our neighbor and said, “look at that funny ship,” they said she is “camouflaged.”
Now I wonder if you Cubs understand why those ships were painted in this way? Why was the ship “camouflaged”?
It was to deceive the enemy.
Nature’s Camouflage
You little Cubs have little gardens at school, you learn to grow all kinds of flowers and things. When your flowers grow and bear nice green leaves, sometimes you wonder why they don’t grow much nicer, the petals of the flowers are all eaten away, and scarcely a green leaf on them. Now, if you look very, very closely and very, very hard, you will find tiny little flies, slugs, and insects creeping round the flowers.
Do you know why it is you never can see those little pests? If is because nature has “camouflaged” them to protect them from their enemy. Nature has made them the same color as the plants they live upon or at least a similar color, and they are in this peculiar color to deceive the enemy.
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| Poster © Roy R. Behrens 2019 |
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