Dazzle: Disguise and Disruption in War and Art

by James Taylor

While it is a constant throughout history that conflict has inspired and engendered great art, it is a much rarer event for art to impact directly upon the vicissitudes of war. Yet, in the course of the First World War, a collision of naval strategy and the nascent modern art movement, led to some two thousand British ships going to sea as the largest painted modernist "canvases" in the world covered in abstract, clashing, decorative, and geometric designs in a myriad of colors. Dazzle camouflage had arrived.

Heavily inspired by the Cubism and British Vorticism art movements, dazzle was conceived and developed by celebrated artist and then naval commander Norman Wilkinson. Dazzle camouflage rejects concealment in favor of disruption. It seeks to break up a ship's silhouette with brightly contrasting geometric designs to make a vessel's speed and direction incredible difficult to discern. False painted bow-waves and sterns were used to confuse and throw off the deadly U-boat captains. The high contrast shapes and colors further made it very difficult to match up a ship in the two halves of an optical naval rangefinder. This new book traces the development of the dazzle aesthetic from theory into practice and beyond.

Genres: History

128 pages, Hardcover

First published November 1, 2015

Reviews

[Frederic · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinating book. Very well illustrated (although some are on the small side), and remarkable for the amount of detailed history included. I found the text somewhat less than engaging at points, but very much so at others. The inclusion of contemporary and recent artistic works inspired by the dazzle ships is a nice touch. One might best appreciate it by leaving it sitting around, dipping in on occasion even at random to enjoy the paintings and photographs and read a page or a few pages, rather than reading straight through. But it's worth engaging on any level, and should appeal to a variety of interests.

[Patrick Stuart · Rating 3 out of 5]

An excellent book which sadly I lack the time to do a deep dive on, but my remarks would echo most of the positive statements in other reviews. Notable for being a social/war history of a war technology/public art project/neurology experiment and for the really wonderful range of images and paintings within.

[Kevin · Rating 5 out of 5]

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[Sarah · Rating 3 out of 5]

The subject was interesting but the writing was quite haphazard and confusing.