Since Sir Edward Poulton’s pioneering study The Colours of Animals was published in 1890, the importance of disguise in the natural world — and, by extension, in the human one — has been widely recognised and exploited. As technology changed the patterns and prospects of warfare, with aerial reconnaissance and long-range shelling becoming a nasty reality, so the need for discretion and subterfuge was more readily apparent. No longer were scarlet uniforms a good idea on soldiers; no longer should an army stand up and be counted. Concealment and dissimulation were the order of the day. Honour, chivalry and honesty may have suffered irrecoverable body blows, but who cared? Dishonesty won wars. What the wider impact of this discovery on human nature may have been it is perhaps too early to tell, but it would make a fascinating subject for research. Instead, this exhibition examines the superficial influence that camouflage has exercised on culture during the past century — principally in the field of fashion. Interesting, but not quite so profound.
But as an exhibition it works extremely well, offering an investigation into the art, craft and science of camouflage in wartime and peacetime, through a display that is both informative and visually stimulating. It begins with the contemporary, a camouflage-pattern jacket and skirt designed in 2006 by Yohji Yamamoto, with the designer’s comment: ‘Sometimes people want to be another person.’ Well, you can see what he means. The viewer moves into the historical section, composed mainly of art and artefacts: as is the practice of camouflage, so is this exhibition made up of nice juxtapositions. Sydney Carline’s fine painting of an air attack on a Turkish transport makes a strong contrast with C.R.W. Nevinson’s dark oil of a tank, with a model tank in front of it by Percyval Tudor-Hart, who also designed some brilliant sniper suit material. (Here we see the efficacy of disruptive pattern — breaking up shape and outline and defeating the eye with the kind of visual tricks so beloved of Op Art in the 1960s.)
The galleries are perhaps a bit dim, but if the lighting were bolder, would the historical material look too dingy? As it is, the exhibits look their best in the atmospheric gloom — notice the underrated Evelyn Dunbar, Edward Wadsworth’s woodcuts and the three rather beautiful American dazzle drawings. The designs for dazzle ships, intended to confuse the U-boats, are perhaps the most spectacular camouflage efforts of WW1, here rather strangely celebrated in a large subfusc night-scene by Lieutenant-Commander Norman Wilkinson, and more jollily in a vast case of painted models. Other striking exhibits include a metal tree constructed by the Germans as an observation post, and false heads (one of a French poilu, the other of a Tommy) to be raised on sticks above the trenches to make the enemy misconceive your numbers. This is verging on the territory of pantomime props and stage sets, though the outcome was generally deadlier.
A number of our finest artists were drawn into action as ‘camoufleurs’, and here is a large painting by the avant-garde Leon Underwood (he taught Henry Moore, among others) documenting the erection of a fake English tree (though using real bark), along with his sketchbook of designs for these arboreal military observation posts on the Western Front. A huge case of uniforms through the 20th century highlights the proliferation of protective pattern, from what look like bloodstains to oak leaves, tiger stripes and chocolate chips. (As an aside, the labelling isn’t always as clear as it might be.) Continuing with the artists’ contribution, there are four rather good Colin Moss watercolours of camouflaging cooling towers and roofs, and half-a-dozen Hugh Casson drawings of similar building subjects. Among the objects are a pair of SOE rubber soles of naked feet to disguise your footprints (what would Holmes have made of that?), and the designer Ashley Havinden’s camera and filters, with his camouflage exercise book hard by.
The Surrealists inevitably get a foot in the door: in one display case is Roland Penrose’s ‘Home Guard Manual of Camouflage’, with a colour photo of his wife, the luscious Lee Miller, demonstrating the virtues of camouflage netting by wearing very little else. (Penrose apparently used to drop this slide into his lectures to the troops; I’ve no doubt it succeeded in livening them up.) The viewer is now livened up, as if that were necessary, by the soundtrack from a video loop of catwalk fashion footage split-screened with men going into battle in camouflage. In the 1960s the Vietnam War brought camouflage into the mainstream, with protest groups clad in fatigues. The rest of the exhibition is devoted to recent and contemporary manifestations of camouflage in art and designer-wear. The cabinets of costume range from T-shirts to baseball boots, via kilts, bikinis and skateboards. Somewhat more upmarket, Gerald Scarfe contributes camouflage designs for the English National Ballet’s 2002 production of The Nutcracker.
Among the couturier stars are Jean Paul Gaultier, who caused something of a stir in 2000 with his flounced chiffon camouflage number, shown here with long matching gloves. There are shoes and a wig by Philip Treacy, a dress and jacket in red, orange and sky blue by Stephen Sprouse, using Warhol designs, and brick-pattern Urban Camouflage by Adelle Lutz. In fine-art terms we are offered eight wild prints by Warhol himself opposite a more subtle and sombre picture by Alighiero Boetti using leftover camouflage fabric. Ian Hamilton Finlay, that controversial war-commentator, could hardly be kept out, and Alain Jacquet’s disguised de Chirico makes a teasing splash to leave on.
Camouflage in the art gallery, on the catwalk or the suburban street turns the whole idea upside-down: in these contexts, camouflage is designed to be seen, to make the wearer more visible, not less so. This subversive treatment of an essentially subversive strategy is the final irony. It certainly makes for good viewing. This is a hugely enjoyable exhibition with a serious core: we are inescapably reminded of the inhumanities and stupidities of war, not just its casual brutalities. Wearing army surplus must not make war any more acceptable or everyday. The War Museum exists as a monument to man’s folly, not as a celebration of the art of death-dealing. No amount of radical designer chic can alter that.
Two publications are timed to coincide with the show: a book called simply Camouflage by the military historian Tim Newark, with an introduction by Jonathan Miller (Thames & Hudson, £24.95), and Camouflage and Art: Design for Deception, Disguise and Decoy in World War 2 by Henrietta Goodden (Unicorn Press, £30). Newark’s book is lavishly illustrated and traces camouflage from its origins in the visual subterfuge of the natural world to the earliest attempts at the human activity (Shakespeare’s Scottish warriors in Macbeth tearing down branches to lurk behind), then on to detailed examinations of its crucial use in both world wars. The final section, entitled ‘Camo Triumphant’, deals with the post-1945 period, when combat gear sadly became high fashion, ‘one of the most ubiquitous design motifs of our times’. Goodden’s book is more restricted in scope, and is based on Ministry of Defence records, Royal College of Art archives and information from the artists’ families. (It was her discovery that so many designers of wartime camouflage were involved with the Royal College which inspired this book.) She writes engagingly about such figures as Julian Trevelyan, Oliver Messel, Edward Seago and Hugh Casson. A welcome addition to the history of camouflage.
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