Design

False Colors: Art, Design and Modern Camouflage

How to hide with wit

An exhilarating kaleidoscope of artists fooling around, making visual puns, tricking society, and conjuring up novel solutions – all tucked into the margins of this astonishing untold history of military camouflage. I had no idea that both Picasso and Matisse assisted their navies in designing new camouflage patterns. This collection of visual wit is really a how-to book on the best way for serious people to employ artists. “Oh God, as if we didn’t have enough trouble! They sent us artists!” – American Army Officer, World War I

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“Salle and her boyfriend, who is a surrealist, staged a weird performance in Hyde Park (in June 1939, at the outset of World War II), reading bits out of Alice in Wonderland and the telephone directory, but the police thought it was some sort of code and took it all down.” – Joan Wyndham, Lessons: A Wartime Diary, p. 79.

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“There is only one difference between a madman and me. I am not mad.” – Salvador Dali

p77papermaiche.web.jpgWWI American soldier with a papier-m ch head on a stick, used to draw the enemy s fire.

p89ship.web.jpgBritish WWI dazzle-painted ship model

-- KK 09/4/03

Excerpt

Hand-drawn metamorphosis in which Beethoven becomes a clarinet

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