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'Syd Solomon: Concealed and Revealed" is a traveling exhibition that explores an often-overlooked influence on Solomon's abstract art -- the techniques of camouflage. Like many brilliant inventions, it was a product of wartime.
In 1941, the artist who lived for 30 years in Sarasota before his death in 2004, had enlisted in the First Camouflage Battalion of the Engineer Aviation Regiment. Solomon helped design camouflage for the coast near San Francisco. Before long, he was creating life-saving illusions for the Royal Engineer Camouflage Corps in London. The techniques he helped invent were abstract art at a very high level.
The standard assumption: camouflage fools the eye. But it really fools the brain. The art of camouflage literally abstracts visual detail to its essence -- the patterns that tell you you're seeing a forest, a desert, or an urban setting. The irony is, "camouflage" has become a pattern we recognize from hats to pants.
"Today, we're inundated with the camouflage...