• Abstract and Figures
• Public Full-text

a b c d Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/LEON_a_01337 by guest on 26 September 2021 G e N eral article seeing through camouflage Abbott Thayer, Background-Picturing and the Use of Cutout Silhouettes r o y r . b e h r e n s In the first decade of the twentieth century, while researching protective ments, reversible figure-ground was used in lowbrow puzzles coloration in nature, artist-naturalist Abbott H. Thayer (1849–1921), and games long before its use in art. In one example from working with his son, Gerald H. Thayer (1883–1939), hypothesized the nineteenth century, we view what seems at first to be an a kind of camouflage that he called “background-picturing.” It was his ABSTRACT contention that, in many animals, the patterns on their bodies make it image of trees on the island of Elba, and then, by a switch seem as if one could “see through” them, as if they were transparent. of attention, the space between the trees becomes the pro- This essay revisits that concept, Thayer’s descriptions and demonstrations file of Napoleon in exile. In another, Abraham Lincoln, on of it, and compares it to current computer-based practices of replacing horseback, rides through a benign grove of trees—and then, gaps in images with “content-aware” digital patches. suddenly, the background space between the trees becomes his horrific assassin, John Wilkes Booth. As I write this, a news article has recently appeared in which This same device resurfaced at the beginning of the twen- the paintings of Belgian surrealist René Magritte are de- tieth century, when it was put to more serious use by an scribed as having been “structured like jokes” [1]. It is not American artist and naturalist, Abbott Handerson Thayer an unwarranted comment, if only because jokes and the (1849–1921), who used it in his research of “concealing col- pun-like images in Magritte’s paintings inevitably take us oration” in nature (soon to acquire the popular name of by surprise. Nearly always, they deflate expectations with camouflage). Thayer’s initial discovery was countershading “punch lines” by juxtaposing mismatched pairs. (which accounts for inverted shading effects in animal col- One example is a “joke” that Magritte repeatedly used in oration), an insight that was followed by his investigations his paintings, in which a foreground figure can just as easily of background matching (the blending of shapes with their seem to be a cutout silhouette through which we see a back- settings), mimicry (the confusing resemblance of different ground. In one of his paintings, the shape of a bird, flying things, which Thayer himself had doubts about as an adap- above the ocean, seems at the same time to be a hole through tive survival mechanism) and figure disruption (in which a which sky and clouds appear. In a painting of a potted plant, figure is broken apart by combining discordant colors and the plant is either cut out or transparent, with a distant ho- shapes) [2]. rizon behind it. In psychology, this phenomenon has long In collaboration with his son, artist and naturalist Gerald been known as reversible figure-ground. Handerson Thayer (1883–1939), at some point Thayer began Although Magritte made frequent use of reversible figure- to espouse a new kind of camouflage called background- ground, he was hardly its originator; he was simply one of picturing. With that concept, he contended that the appear- many in a lengthy historic tradition. Like other visual amuse- ance of animals had evolved toward being well suited for their customary habitat. As he put it, the patterns on their bodies are “a picture of such background as would be seen Roy R. Behrens (designer, writer, teacher), 2022 X Avenue, Dysart, IA 52224, U.S.A. Email: <[email protected]>. through it if it were transparent” [3]. See <www.mitpressjournals.org/toc/leon/51/1> for supplemental files associated But animals are rarely immobile. They move from one with this issue. setting to another, and Thayer was not suggesting that article Frontispiece. Various stages in a digital experiment with Gerald an animal’s pattern is a literal pictorial image of a single Thayer’s watercolor painting of a Male Ruffed Grouse in Forest (a), the background. That would be counterproductive. Instead, he original of which was reproduced as Plate II, facing p. 38, in Concealing reasoned, it is an average of a range of typical settings, a ge- Coloration (1909). In (b), the background has been digitally removed, using n eric abstracted equivalent of the appearance(s) of the ani- Adobe Photoshop, while in (c), the bird has been removed, leaving only the background. In (d), the empty figure of the bird in (c) has been selected, mal’s usual haunts. In Thayer’s words, the patterns found on then filled in by the software, using attributes supplied by the background. animals are “a sort of compound picture of their normal ©2018 ISAST doi:10.1162/LEON_a_01337 LEONARDO, Vol. 51, No. 1, pp. 40–46, 2018 41 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/LEON_a_01337 by guest on 26 September 2021 a Fig. 1. An example of background-picturing, as shown in a Thayer drawing of a bird as viewed against a “uniformly patterned horizontal ground plane,” from Concealing Coloration in the Animal Kingdom (1909), facing p. 32. Public domain. backgrounds—a picture seemingly made up by the averag- ing of innumerable landscapes” [4]. b Abbott Thayer is often described as eccentric. Even his Fig. 2. Two views of a painting (by Abbott Thayer, Gerald Thayer and son, who was also unconventional, referred to his father as Rockwell Kent) of a copperhead snake in a setting of leaves on a forest floor. In Fig. 2a, the entire painting is visible, but the snake is difficult to find. In an “extreme believer” (although not until after his father’s de- Fig. 2b, a blank page, from which the snake’s silhouette has been cut out, mise) [5]. Thayer’s assertions on camouflage were lampooned is superimposed on the painting, making the snake clearly visible. From in public by the naturalist, author and statesman Theodore Concealing Coloration (1909). Plate XI, facing p. 172. Public domain. Roosevelt, the former U.S. President, who had recently come back from a grandiose African wildlife hunt. Thayer’s ideas, Roosevelt claimed, were “nonsensical” and absurd, the fail- background of decaying leaves on the forest floor [8]. Aided ing of “a certain type of artistic temperament” [6]. Given by artistic license somewhat, the snake and the ground so ex- that tenor, it would be hard to overestimate the skepticism pertly match that it is nearly impossible to distinguish the one with which background-picturing (an especially challeng- from the other (Fig. 2a). That is Stage 1 in this “proof” of the ing concept) was received in Thayer’s lifetime by scientists, wondrous effectiveness of background-picturing. But then naturalists—and anyone else possessed of (nonartistic) com- Stage 2 is introduced, which simply consists of a full-page mon sense. overlay, devoid of printing, but out of which has been excised In support of background-picturing, the Thayers’ stron- a precisely cutout silhouette of the copperhead snake. When gest evidence was presented in their famous book, Concealing superimposed, the overlay blocks out the background—and Coloration in the Animal Kingdom (first published in 1909, reveals the now conspicuous snake (Fig. 2b). then reissued in 1918). Among their illustrations of back- Concealing Coloration was sufficiently well received that ground-picturing is a drawing of a bird within the woodland the Thayers were motivated to develop a series of camou- setting of a “uniformly patterned horizontal ground plane,” as flage demonstrations, of which they made multiple copies. viewed by an observer who is looking slightly downward [7] While these were initially devised to show how countershad- (Fig. 1). In this example, their intention was to demonstrate ing works, Thayer carried some of these with him when he how an animal’s markings can abstractly yet persuasively traveled to Europe to lecture at museums and universities, rhyme with the perspective gradient of the background. each time leaving one behind for use as a permanent public While researching animal camouflage, the Thayers came display. Later, when his research expanded to include both up with the clever device of using a superimposed cutout military and natural camouflage, a wider range of models (a stencil of sorts) on paintings of figures on backgrounds. were made. The Thayers then exhibited these in art galleries In their book, the most famous example of this is a painting and museums, in the manner that art is commonly shown. of a snake, based on an actual copperhead snake that was It is uncertain how many of these setups have been pre- borrowed from the Bronx Zoo. Collaboratively painted by served, but we do know what some of them looked like, both Thayers and by Rockwell Kent (Abbott Thayer’s stu- because they were reproduced in news articles (Fig. 3). In dent at the time), it shows the camouflaged serpent against a 1918, for example, a selection of these were exhibited at the 42 Behrens, Seeing through Camouflage Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/LEON_a_01337 by guest on 26 September 2021 Knoedler and Company art gallery in New York and, after “sleights” as unworthy of Thayer’s capabilities. This view is that, at the Fifth Avenue home of Cornelius and Sophia Van- clearly stated in a diary entry by Harvard botanist Oakes derbilt, as a fundraiser for the Red Cross [9].

Load more

  8

Copy Link