Sunday 22 July 2018

Liverpool: The Beatles and a Dazzle ship

In Liverpool (England), The Beatles are everywhere. The city is rightly proud to be the home town of such a famous band.

 

The Beatles – Bronze by Andy Edwards (2015) 

An engraved stone in front of the group’s statue reads:

“The Beatles
last played in Liverpool at the Empire Theatre on 
December 5th 1965
… but they never really left.
They are synonymous with this city 

A tribute on behalf of fans worldwide.

Funded by the Cavern Club.” 

Near the docks was also a multicoloured boat painted by the artist Carlos Cruz-Diez and placed on Liverpool Waterfront.


Dazzle Ship by Carlos Cruz-Diez (The title of the piece is “Induction Chromatique à Double Fréquence pour l’Edmund Gardner Ship / Liverpool. Paris, 2014”) 



The notice near the boat had some very interesting pieces of information on the origin of dazzle painting:

Dazzle painting was a sort of camouflage for ships that was used from 1917. The contrasting violent colours, curves and broken shapes would not hide the ship but create an optical distortion. This illusion made it more difficult for German submarines to calculate the course of the ship.

The ‘dazzle’ style was heavily influenced by Cubism and its multiple viewpoints. The marine painter Norman Wilkinson invented Dazzle painting and more than 2,000 ships were painted that way.

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