Picasso invented military camouflage

[CesarNostradamus]

‘I well remember at the beginning of the war,’ Gertrude Stein wrote in 1938, ‘being with Picasso on the Boulevard Raspail when the first camouflaged truck passed. It was at night, we had heard of camouflage but we had not seen it and Picasso, amazed, looked at it and then cried out, yes it is we who made it, that is Cubism.’ Stein went on to suggest that the entire First World War had been an exercise in Cubism. Hailing Picasso as the first to register an epoch-making change in the ‘composition’ of the world, she concluded that a great convulsion had been necessary to awaken the masses to his discovery: ‘Wars are only a means of publicising the thing already accomplished.’ The artist Lucien-Victor Guirand de Scévola, who was one of the forces behind France’s camouflage initiative, claimed to have used Cubist means to ‘deform objects totally’ and deliberately to have employed avant-garde artists in his section de camouflage, where they proved adept at ‘denaturing any form’. As Roy Behrens points out in the flamboyantly peculiar Encyclopedia of Camouflage, ships painted in the disruptive ‘dazzle’ schemes developed by the British artist Norman Wilkinson were said to resemble ‘Cubist paintings on a colossal scale’


One of Picassos Cubism paintings

 

[the 48th regulator]

I think he even alluded to that fact that lack of camouflage, can lead to ones death and destrictuion.

Look at his painting Guernica, it cleary shows the populace using newsprint as a type of camo, and look what the bombardments of the facists did to them in Spain;

You may be on to something with Picasso.

dileas

tess

 

[vonGarvin]

I think Shakespeare invented camoflage in his "Scottish Play".  Remember when the wood marched upon them?  That or Johnny Rambo did.  I can't remember which...

 

[the 48th regulator]

I think Shakespeare invented camoflage in his "Scottish Play".  Remember when the wood marched upon them?  That or Johnny Rambo did.  I can't remember which...

Crikey,

I forgot about the wood thing from Shakespeare....

Now you are making me rethink my stance.

dileas

tess

 

[Michael OLeary]

The Tragedy of Macbeth
Act 5, Scene 5

MACBETH

    If thou speak'st false,
    Upon the next tree shalt thou hang alive,
    Till famine cling thee: if thy speech be sooth,
    I care not if thou dost for me as much.
    I pull in resolution, and begin
    To doubt the equivocation of the fiend
    That lies like truth: 'Fear not, till Birnam wood
    Do come to Dunsinane:' and now a wood
    Comes toward Dunsinane. Arm, arm, and out!
    If this which he avouches does appear,
    There is nor flying hence nor tarrying here.
    I gin to be aweary of the sun,
    And wish the estate o' the world were now undone.
    Ring the alarum-bell! Blow, wind! come, wrack!
    At least we'll die with harness on our back.

 

[Maclimius]

Gee, and I always attributed those passages in that play to the common practice at the time of armies cutting down forests to produce their siege weapons rather than transporting those items long distances. ie. ballistas, trebuchets, catapults, battering rams, pikes, spears, etc. However, the taking it in to the concept of camouflage as well does make one think. Interesting to say the least.

 

[CesarNostradamus]

Well while you guys were learning Shakespearian in school. I was indulging in reading about Erwin Rommel. Now thats some great shakespear'

 

[CesarNostradamus]

This MAN WAS BEAUTIFUL


he treated even his enemies humanely, and orders to kill captured Jewish soldiers and civilians in all theaters of his command were defiantly ignored.

 

[CesarNostradamus]

At the age of fourteen, Rommel and a friend built a full-scale glider that was able to fly short distances

 

[CrazyCanuck]

Is it just me or did you just hijack your own thread? What's Rommel got to do with anything here ???

 

[CesarNostradamus]

I would LOVE to see ED HARRIS play Erwin Rommels character in a movie. It would be my favorite movie./

 

[aesop081]

wow....

i would say thats just about enough for now, even for radio chatter

Milnet.ca staff