Distortion, illusion and transformation: the evolution of Dazzle Painting, a camouflage system to protect Allied shipping from Unrestricted Submarine Warfare, 1917–1918 War

In October 1917 the War Cabinet was notified in Admiralty Memorandum 2256 ‘Dazzle Scheme of painting ships’1 that artist Norman Wilkinson’s camouflage proposal to paint the entire external surfaces of vessels in highly contrasting asymmetric patterns would be applied to merchant and some naval vessels with the aim of disrupting the crippling effects on British commerce from Unrestricted Submarine Warfare waged by Germany in January of that year. Close reading of the surviving archives of design material and documentation concerning the 14-18 War Dazzle camouflage scheme provides a means to re-interpret the visual language of the designs that have been read (or misread) and popularized through contextualization in art history and association with notions of avant-garde spatial practice since 1919. Testing and representing this argument has been achieved through drawing research methodologies as well as textual and archival research