AV俱乐部

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AV俱乐部 Art Gallery's Peter Dykhuis and Mark Stebbins consider a painting by Arthur Lismer. (Bruce Bottomley Photo)

Lots of artists will tell you that art serves a purpose 鈥� providing beauty, for example, or provoking thought. What most won鈥檛 mention is that art can save you from a U-Boat鈥檚 torpedoes. Such utilitarianism is the focus of Razzle Dazzle: The Uses of Abstraction, the newest exhibit at the AV俱乐部 Art Gallery.

Razzle Dazzle focuses on the work of Arthur Lismer, an official Canadian war artist during First World War. Working as a war artist, Arthur Lismer was especially drawn to the 鈥渄azzle ships鈥� moving in and out of Canadian harbours. Once typical warships and liners, a British marine painter named Norman Wilkinson had the bright idea of painting these vessels with swirls and stripes of color to trick the eye of enemy U-Boats. Once painted, the dazzle ships looked about as grim or warlike as rubber ducks: it鈥檚 hard to believe they were actually an act of military genius. But considering the tradition of bestowing warships with high-handed names鈥擶ilhelmina, for example, or the grimly satiric Liberator (both featured in the exhibit)鈥攊t becomes clear that war has always evoked necessary abstraction. Dazzle ships were almost inevitable.

Abstract art鈥檚 sheer simplicity is challenging, and photographs of warships from the U.S. Naval Historical Center help ground excessively exuberant canvases in reality. Some early abstracts exhibit a flirtation with representation; Jack Bush鈥檚 Sash on Red Ground (1963) evokes a women鈥檚 figure or a skein of silk. Yvonne McKague Housser鈥檚 Study in Music is painted in oil on aluminum, and its spikes and curves suggest the stylized weaponry of a stained glass window, or the illustrations on a pack of cards. Of course, that鈥檚 just how I see it: sometimes it鈥檚 impossible not to project one鈥檚 own imagination onto abstract art. Ray Mead鈥檚 Black, Orange, Blue (1961) seems reminiscent of an old-fashioned black chalkboard, a square of red near the bottom standing in for an eraser. Even Guido Molinari鈥檚 1966 Mutation, though nothing but stripes, has me thinking of the circus.

The dazzle ships were useful鈥攅normously so鈥攂ut deception is not limited to tactical painting: on the contrary, it is almost always present in art. The soldier in Arthur Lismer鈥檚 undated Gun Turret is scrawled, childlike, in ink on paper; a cheerful, simple piece belying both the artist鈥檚 skill and the soldier鈥檚 deadly duties. The crowd on the dock in Lismer鈥檚 Olympic with Returned Soldiers聽 (1919) looks cheerful, celebratory until you spot the blurred figure of a man hunched over what might be a cane. And in Arthur Lismer鈥檚 Halifax Harbour 鈥� Time of War (1917) the grey smoke and white clouds blend into swooping seagulls until it鈥檚 hard to tell which is which. Not all wartime deception and subterfuge, Lismer seems to be saying, is as easy to spot as a dazzle ship.