Camouflage
and Art: Design for Deception in World
War 2
by Henrietta
Goodden
London: Unicorn Press, 2007
192 pp. 120 illustrations, color and b&w.
Trade, $55.00
ISBN: 978-0-906290-87-3.
Reviewed by Roy R. Behrens
Department of Art, University of Northern
Iowa, USA.
http://www.bobolinkbooks.com
ballast@netins.net
The current heightened interest in camouflage
can be at least partly attributed to Charles
Darwin. In The Origin of Species,
first published in 1859, he hypothesized
that the evolution of species occurs not
through divine intervention but by autonomous
natural selection, and that the likelihood
of survival is weighted in favor of those
that are better fitted than others. By
the turn of the century, the study of
natural camouflage (known then as "protective
coloration") became a research theatre
for the confirmation of Darwins
theories. Knowing that, it is of additional
interest to find (as this book ably documents)
that one of the chief participants in
wartime British camouflage was Robin Darwin
(1910-1974), a painter and descendent
of the famous naturalist.
During World War II, Robin Darwin became
secretary to the British Camouflage Committee,
where he spoke in favor of using artists
as camouflage experts, along with architects,
engineers and scientists. Later, a few
years after the war, when the Royal College
of Art was reopened and reorganized, Robin
Darwin was appointed its director. One
of the achievements of this book is to
reveal the surprising extent to which
artists associated with the college (whether
before or after the war) were also directly
connected with the development of camouflage:
indeed, in the years that followed the
war, nearly all the schools faculty
in graphics, printmaking, industrial and
furniture design, and jewelry, along with
a number of tutors and guest artists,
had in some way served as camouflage advisors.
A further purpose of the book is more
inclusive: divided into 10 chapters (with
specific subject areas as Civil Camouflage,
RAF Camouflage, Army Camouflage, Desert
Camouflage, Admiralty Camouflage and so
on), it provides a more generalized overview
of the whole of British camouflage during
World War II, as undertaken by a wide
range of artists, not just those with
direct links to the RCA. The roster of
camouflage artists is lengthy and includes
(among numerous others) such more or less
familiar names as artists Frederick Gore,
Stanley Hayter, Roland Penrose, Edward
Wadsworth, David Pye, Edward Seago and
Julian Trevelyan; architects Hugh Casson
and Basil Spense; stage designers Robert
Medley and Oliver Messel; fashion designer
Victor Stiebel; and zoologist (and scientific
illustrator) Hugh B. Cott.
Few people are better suited for putting
this book together than is Henrietta Goodden,
a British authority on fashion design,
who currently teaches at the Royal College
of Art and who is the daughter of the
late Robert Goodden, one of the RCA teachers
who also served as a naval camouflage
advisor.
At the moment there is a frenzy of on-going
research about camouflage, both natural
and military, much of it still in the
interests of understanding natural selection.
Anyone who knows the existing literature
will appreciate the significance of this
book: It provides us for the first time
with a tirelessly researched, well-written
account of a slice of the oddball connection
between Modern-era art and camouflage
(especially British Modernism), a part
that was there but not fully explored.
Plentifully supplemented by camouflage-related
artwork, historic wartime photographs,
government documents, and hand-drawn field
instructions (many of which appear in
print for the first time), this book is
a rich, indispensable source for future
work within this field.
(Reprinted by permission from Ballast
Quarterly Review, Volume 21 Number
1, Autumn 2007.)