ROY R. BEHRENS Camouflage, Cuhism, and Creativity: The Dissolution of Boundaries ... where you see a boundary, remove it (or partition, remove it). And if you must have them, then have them movable; and where you have-as Fuller says-a choice between fixity and fiexibility, choose fiexibility. This is a very' good ruie» In military and natural camouflage, one finds systems of colora- tion which are "the exact opposite of that upon which an artist depends" (Cott, 1938). The artist makes "something unreal recognizable," even in the case of abstract art, while the camou- fleur makes "something real unrecognizable." Art attempts to reveal; camouflage tries to conceal. Both address an implied "seeing eye" (Portmann, 1959), an eye to instruct in the first case, and one to confound in the latter. In the words of a prom- inent biologist and former camoufleur: "I think it likely that there are no finer galleries of abstract art than the cabinet drawers of the tropical butterfly collector" (Hardy, 1965). The difference between art and camouflage, as revelation and concealment, is merely a breach of intent. In order to reveal a form, the artist must hide or omit those parts which he thinks are trite. In order to conceal a form, the camoufleur accentuates ~ the irrelevant, the extraneous, the insignificant, and, by that, he baffles, the eye. "Both presuppose the phenomenon of vision" (Harlan, 1970) in the sense that both pay homage to the prin- ciples of visuai organization, the so-called "laws of gestalt." Not surprisingly then, the products are often similar, as when, seeing camouflaged guns, Picasso exclaimed, "We are the ones who made this-it's cubisml" (Stein, 1939). While Braque, his co- l John Cage, Choosing Abundance, North American Review, 1969, Fall. 91 Volume JJ Number 2 Second Quarter