The HMS President website tells us:
Leading German artist, Tobias Rehberger, is transforming the HMS President (1918) by covering it entirely in ‘dazzle camouflage’ designs as part of 14-18 NOW, the official cultural programme to commemorate the centenary of the First World War. The completed work will be unveiled on 14 July 2014.
‘Dazzle camouflage’, also known as ‘dazzle painting’ was used extensively during the First World War as a means of camouflaging a ship, making it difficult for the enemy to target it accurately. As one of the last three surviving warships of the Royal Navy built during the First World War, the HMS President (1918), the first type of warship built specifically for anti-submarine warfare, was originally ‘dazzled’ in this way.
The theory of dazzle painting was first introduced in 1914 by the scientist John Graham Kerr to then First Lord of the Admiralty, Winston Churchill, with the intention of adopting disruptive camouflage which was initially called ‘parti-colouring’. The idea was not to ‘hide’ the ships, but to paint them in such a way that their appearance was optically distorted, so that it was difficult for a submarine to calculate the course the ship was travelling on, and to know from what angle to attack. The ‘dazzle’ effect was achieved by painting the ship in contrasting stripes and curves that broke up its shape and outline.
In 1917, following heavy losses of merchant ships to German submarines, the demand for this camouflage increased. The marine painter, Norman Wilkinson, a future President of the Royal Institute of Painters in Watercolours, promoted the spectacular system of stripes and disrupted lines, characterised by garish colours and sharp interlocking shapes, to which he coined the term ‘dazzle painting’ and was credited with its invention. The strong style unsurprisingly attracted artists’ attention with Picasso claiming it was invented by the Cubists and Vorticist artist Edward Wadsworth, painting a series on the subject after he supervised the application of ‘dazzle’ patterning to over 2,000 ships.
The ‘dazzle’ technique has been a recurring theme in Tobias Rehberger’s work. In 2009 he was awarded the Golden Lion Award at the 53rd International Venice Biennale for a café he created that was based entirely on the principles of dazzle pattern. He was born in 1966 in Esslingen, Germany. From 1987 to 1993 he studied under Thomas Bayrle and Martin Kippenberger at Frankfurt’s renowned Städelschule where he has been Professor of Sculpture since 2001 and until recently also Deputy Rector of the Fine Arts Academy. He has exhibited extensively internationally including shows in New York, Tokyo, London, Paris, Milan, Rome, Brussels, Berlin, and Antwerp and his work is included in many important international collections.
Co-commissioned by 14-18 NOW with Chelsea College of Art and Design and Liverpool Biennial in association with HMS President and Tate Liverpool.
Supported by the National Lottery through Arts Council England and the Heritage Lottery Fund and the Goethe-Institut London.
Dazzle Ship London complements Carlos Cruz-Diez’s acclaimed ‘dazzle’ commission for the Edmund Gardner in Liverpool co-commissioned by 14-18 NOW, the Liverpool Biennial and Tate Liverpool in association with Merseyside Maritime Museum.
Wikipedia has an article about dazzle camouflage that tells us:
Dazzle camouflage, also known as razzle dazzle or dazzle painting, was a family of ship camouflage used extensively in World War I and to a lesser extent in World War II and afterwards. Credited to artist Norman Wilkinson, though with a prior claim by the zoologist John Graham Kerr, it consisted of complex patterns of geometric shapes in contrasting colours, interrupting and intersecting each other.
Unlike some other forms of camouflage, dazzle works, if at all, not by offering concealment but by making it difficult to estimate a target's range, speed, and heading. Norman Wilkinson explained in 1919 that dazzle was intended more to mislead the enemy as to the correct position to take up than actually to miss his shot when firing.
Dazzle was adopted by the British Admiralty and the United States Navy with little evaluation. Each ship's dazzle pattern was unique to avoid making classes of ships instantly recognisable to the enemy. The result was that a profusion of dazzle schemes were tried, and the evidence for their success was at best mixed. So many factors were involved that it was impossible to determine which were important, and whether any of the colour schemes were effective.
Dazzle attracted the notice of artists such as Picasso, who claimed that Cubists had invented it. The Vorticist artist Edward Wadsworth, who supervised the camouflaging of over 2,000 ships during the First World War, painted a series of canvases of dazzle ships after the war, based on his wartime work.
The information board, located on the South Bank near the OXO Tower, where the best view of HMS President can be found, tells us:
Dazzle
ShipLondon
14-18 - Now
WWI Centenary Art Commissions
Opposite you on the north bank of the river, artist Tobias Rehberger has created a contemporary dazzle design for HMS President (1918) as part of 14-18 NOW, WWI Centenary Art Commissions. This temporary artwork takes as its starting point a style of optical distortion used extensively during the First World War, called Dazzle painting.
Devised by British artist Norman Wilkinson and supervised by vorticist artist Edward Wadsworth, the camouflage technique incorporated bold shapes and strong contrasts, with an aim to confuse rather than conceal.
The HMS President (1918) is one of three surviving WWI warships. It was 'dazzled' on its launch in 1918 under its original name HMS Saxifrage.