Chapter 38 II From Montparnasse to the War (1) The Art of Disguise

Hidden War is the masterpiece of the Cubists, or their return to the motherland. Jean Polan In February 1916, Apollinaire wrote to Madeleine to report good news to her: he had a new military uniform.But he was dissatisfied with the fact that the new military uniform was not the oriental khaki, but the original brightly colored top and trousers were replaced with sea blue.It would be even better if it is a "camouflage" uniform, because it can be confused with nature and can achieve the purpose of confusing the enemy.This idea actually originated from Picasso.A year ago, Picasso wrote to his poet friend Apollinaire, proposing to him a strategic point: Even a cannon painted gray can be easily identified by the enemy.If you want to hide them, you have to work on the shape and match it with colorful and bright colors like the costume of the clown in the play.

Apollinaire described how the Benin bird (Picasso) hid heavy artillery in "The Murdered Poet".According to Gertrude Stein, as a parade of military parade passed along the Boulevard Saint-Germain in Paris one day, the Benin exclaimed joyfully, "We did it!" We, the Cubists. The practice of hidden warfare began near Dole in the Lorraine region of France in the early days of the war.A set designer had the idea of ​​hiding a cannon and its operators in a large canvas painted in earth tones.The staff sent a plane to circle over the hidden cannon. The pilot saw that the ground below him was full of trees and there was no sign of the cannon.

A few months later, at Ponta-Mousson, a telephone operator received the order to fire.He carried out the order, but just as the shell was loaded, the enemy's shell blew up his own cannon.The operator considered: Could an effective protection be devised for the weapons and personnel of the army to be submerged in nature? The telephone operator happened to be a painter himself.He believed that one could use color and graphics for this purpose.So he reported this idea to the staff. In February 1915, the Minister of War ordered the formation of a special group to carry out this work under his direct leadership.Thus, Guirand de Scevola (Guirand de Scevola (before the war, Apollinaire talked about him in his art column)) formed the first hidden technology team in military history.At the beginning, there were 30 volunteers, and after three years, it developed to 3,000 hidden technicians and 8,000 production staff.Their logo: a golden chameleon on a red background.

What kind of personnel did Svora recruit?Someone with no military expertise, nor any combat talent: Cubist painters.Jean Polan said: Only those engravings that public opinion insists on being different can, in times of danger, be the talisman of weapons and armies that say what it is like. [Excerpt from "Boss Braque" by Jean Polan] Cubist painters were better than anyone else at drawing objects on canvas using background and graphic techniques.Although the objects they draw do not appear to be the shape of the original object, they can show all sides of the object.They can fully restore the original appearance of the object, rather than only reflecting the object in the perspective of a certain observer.Conversely, they can also achieve the purpose of hiding objects by eliminating the three-dimensional effect of objects.It is also possible to reflect all sides of the entire object by painting according to an object, and many other objects are presented in front of the audience: this is the principle that cubist painting can seduce and set traps to confuse the enemy.In this way, enemy pilots flying over realistic fake cannons drawn on the plane would think those were real cannons no matter what angle they looked at.At the same time, the real cannons were hidden in the fake trees, which in the eyes of the enemy pilots were real trees no matter what angle they looked at.Photos taken from the air also failed to show any of the cannons we had hidden inside.This technology can not only hide buildings, people and weapons, but also effectively trick the enemy into making mistakes.

The Cubist painters set to work under the leadership of Captain Giron de Swara.There is something quite startling about it: these painters who were so violently attacked before the war as apologists for "German art", these artists who were fed by the Germans Carnville, Yude, and others in Taosse , and now they are all working together to defend their French motherland!Not only painters, but also sculptors, theater set designers, sketchers and architects: Bouchard, Bussengo, Gamovan, Du Ferenna, Dinoyer de Segonzac (who led the Hidden painting workshop in Amiens), Fran, Roger de Lafrenay, Marguchi, André Marr, Luc-Albert Moreau, Jacques Veron... In 1916, Braque also participated in this work for several months.However, despite Swolla's insistence, Derain and Loesche were refused participation in the work.

Throughout the war these artists painted fake trees in watercolors in circuses or art schools (the brainchild of Bicoff Sandras, who inspired Chaplin), and sent them to the rear to be produced .Inside these circuses or schools of fine arts, there were ladders that allowed sentries to observe the opponent's trenches.Artists painted leaves painted in the same color as nature above the cannons and on the helmets of the soldiers, and covered the edges and corners of the cannons or weapons with colorful colors or coconut leaf fiber cloth; Pretend to be ruins, make fake walls, make windmills out of cardboard, make furniture out of grass, draw human or animal corpses with paintbrushes... They paint fake forests on huge canvases, hiding real machine guns, railways, etc. and road milestones; they were able to use these techniques to hide entire villages, trenches, and bridges; and they made soldiers with pistols peek out from their trenches to attract enemy fire. In 1917, during the battle on the top of Messina, it was the sudden stretching of a huge canvas with soldiers jumping out of the trench that scared the German soldiers away.

Later, this concealment technique was adopted by all armies in the world.The French Cubists would help the British and Italians to make hidden paintings.The Germans also started using it in 1917.After the war, many of these painters were disgusted with this art because what they saw in the punctured trees, villages with collapsed houses, destroyed monuments, shattered and dismembered corpses was The dirtiest reality in the world.Later, some people naturally asked such a question: Did the Cubists who painted the war so realistically predict that this war would happen a long time ago?