Wednesday 17 March 2010

give it the old razzle-dazzle

A little-known fact is that dazzle is my favourite type of camouflage. Credited to Norman Wilkinson, a marine artist and naval lieutenant, it was a way of painting big ships that made it hard for U-boats to work out which direction they were travelling and how fast, consequently making it harder to torpedo them.

Even if the camouflage didn't work, and it did, it would have been worth doing. Just look at the Empress of Russia:



Or the Argus:



The beauty queen of the dazzle world was the Gloire - the bottom of these two pictures is her in all her Gloiry:



The top, however, is perhaps the most deceptive dazzle painting I have seen. And if you think that's the most interesting thing about the picture, wait till you get a load of the ship's name: the USS Mahomet.

The only sad thing about dazzle-painting is that it was done in colour. Here is a crudely colourised version of the Gloire. I have no idea if it is based on any real description:



If you spend as much time as me in Monte Carlo, you'll never have seen this dazzling yacht there. It was painted by Jeff Koons. Even he does something right once in a while.

1 comment:

Claire said...
This comment has been removed by the author.