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False Colors: Art, Design and Modern Camouflage [Paperback]

Roy R. Behrens (Author)
3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)


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Book Description

February 2002 0971324409 978-0971324404 1
An engaging and often amusing account of the little known use of artists, designers, and architects as army, navy, and civilian camouflage experts (called "camoufleurs") during World Wars I and II. Described and illustrated are documented attempts--some ingenious, others bizarre--at "fooling the eye" by such prominent artists (from France, England, the US, and Germany) as Abbott H. Thayer, Jean-Louis Forain, Andre Dunoyer de Segonzac, Jacques Villon, Grant Wood, Thomas Hart Benton, Norman Wilkinson, Everett Warner, Sherry Fry, Barry Faulkner, Homer Saint-Gaudens, John Singer Sargent, Frederic Waugh, Edward Seago, Blair Hughes-Stanton, Charles Burchfield, Oskar Schlemmer, Franz Marc, Edward Wadsworth, William Stanley Hayter, Roland Penrose, Julian Trevelyan, Eric Sloane, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, Gyorgy Kepes, Jon Gnagy, Arshile Gorky, Victor Papenek, and Ellsworth Kelly.

Illustrated by 120 vintage photographs, diagrams, and artworks, the text explains how the strategies used to conceal objects in nature and warfare are based on the very same "unit-forming factors" that artists, designers, and architects use every day in the creation of paintings, prints, fonts, logos, page layouts, web sites, furniture, buildings, and so on.

Throughout the book, the author makes shrewd observations about the connections of art, design, and camouflage to such seemingly wide-ranging topics as Gestalt psychology, esthetics, Cubism, Dada, Surrealism, psychoanalysis, kindergarten, creativity, the Bauhaus, Frank Lloyd Wright, humor, dream analysis, Rockwell Kent, poetry, pickpockets, and sleight of hand.

Of additional interest are a camouflage timeline, an account of the etymology of the word camouflage, and a 10-page bibliography, the largest ever compiled on the subject of art and camouflage.



Editorial Reviews

Review

An exhilarating kaleidoscope of artists fooling around, making visual puns, tricking society, and conjuring up novel solutions. -- Kevin Kelly, Recomendo web site, September 2003

[A] highly original, well-researched, and often fascinating book. -- Modernism / Modernity, 2003

[The author's] romp through history and ideas is what makes this book both refreshing and provocative. -- Graphic Impressions, Summer 2002

[This book's goodness] lies in its freshness, its range of information, and its sound technical theories about how we see). -- Guy Davenport, Harper's Magazine, August 2002

[This book] is nicely produced and copiously illustrated with well chosen items. -- Leonardo Digital Reviews web site, April 2002

From the Publisher

The author of this book is a leading authority on art and camouflage, and this volume is widely considered to be the best introduction to the subject. He has been interviewed about camouflage on NOVA (PBS), Equinox (BBC), and BBC Radio, and often serves as a consultant on the subject. Described by Communication Arts magazine as "one of the most original thinkers in design," he was nominated in 2002 for the Smithsonian Institution's prestigious National Design Awards.

Product Details

  • Paperback: 224 pages
  • Publisher: Bobolink Books; 1 edition (February 2002)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0971324409
  • ISBN-13: 978-0971324404
  • Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 6 x 0.6 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces
  • Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,134,398 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Roy R. Behrens (born 1946) is a writer and designer who has taught graphic design, illustration and design history for more than 35 years, at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, the Art Academy of Cincinnati, and other schools. Since 1990, he has been on the faculty at the University of Northern Iowa, where he is a Professor of Art and Distinguished Scholar.

For many years he was associated with Ballast Quarterly Review (a "periodical commonplace book" which he founded in 1985); North American Review; Leonardo: International Journal of the Arts, Sciences and Technology; Gestalt Theory; Print Magazine, and other publications. He has written hundreds of essays and articles for these and other periodicals, including Lotus Internationale, Revista de Occidente, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, Tate Etc., and so on.

As a graphic designer, he has illustrated books, short stories and poetry by Jerzy Kosinski, Margaret Atwood, Joyce Carol Oates, Joseph Langland, and other American writers. In recent years, he designed Dean and Geraldine Schwarz's massive book on Marguerite Wildenhain and the Bauhaus: An Eyewitness Anthology, chosen as a Recommended Book for 2008 by the blog Design Observer. Described by Communication Arts magazine as "one of the most original thinkers in design," he was a nominee for the National Design Awards in 2003.

Among his other recent books are FALSE COLORS: Art, Design and Modern Camouflage (2002), COOK BOOK: Gertrude Stein, William Cook, and Le Corbusier (2005), CAMOUPEDIA: A Compendium of Research on Art, Architecture and Camouflage (2009), and SHIP SHAPE: A Dazzle Camouflage Sourcebook: An Anthology of Writings about World War I Ship Camouflage (2012). He is married to artist Mary Snyder Behrens, with whom he is co-proprietor of Bobolink Books.

Author's statement:

"Nearly everything I write about is more or less related to a concern that I had as an art student (in the 1960s) about what (if any) aspects of art, design, architecture and other so-called "visual arts" are objective, universal and enduring. This led to a study of vision, and, inevitably, to the question of how to subvert vision (becloud, prevent, mislead), which of course then led to camouflage.

At about the same time, I began to explore the idea of an analogical link between (perceptual) figure-ground diagrams and (conceptual) Venn diagrams. I enrolled in an architectural course in which I designed dwelling spaces that were essentially spatial puns, logical contradictions or category errors. In part, this came from reading books by Michel Foucault, Claude Levi-Strauss, Gregory Bateson, Christopher Alexander, Thomas Kuhn, Arthur Koestler, E.H. Gombrich, Edmund Leach, Morse Peckham, Colin Turbayne, Robert Venturi, Charles Jencks, H.G. Barnett and others who had written about what is sometimes known as translogical thinking or metaphorical thinking.

In time, I also came to see that camouflage is itself translogical and, at least to some extent, it is deliberate category violation or (in Turbayne's words) sort-crossing."



 

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Average Customer Review
3.5 out of 5 stars (2 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars A somewhat strange book, August 29, 2008
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This review is from: False Colors: Art, Design and Modern Camouflage (Paperback)
As a serious Naval Historian I purchased this book for the information it contains about USN and Allied Naval Camouflage Theories, and Applications....And I was not disappointed as this book does proved an excellent insight into the operations of the camouflage bureaus in both WW1 and WWII.....As well a look at the visual and artistic theories used in the design and evaluation of camouflage patterns............Unfortunately it is written in an 'artsy style', with loads of what I felt were 'off the subject' text, illustrations, cartoons and such....I would however recommend it to the serious Naval Historian for information not published elsewhere....Wayne Scarpaci
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0 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars False Colors Review, January 7, 2009
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Brooklyn Artist (New York, NY United States) - See all my reviews
This review is from: False Colors: Art, Design and Modern Camouflage (Paperback)
Excited about this book. It is only black & white, but since it is more historical and filled with theoretical information, I think that it's alright to not be in color. It took a little time to arrive, but was within the time range of the assigned delivery date.
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