Carlos Cruz-Diez, Liverpool

Carlos Cruz-Diez (b.1923), Liverpool, 12 June 2014 – Winter 2015.
The artist has been commissioned by the Liverpool Biennial of Contemporary Art and Tate Liverpool to commemorate the centenary of the beginning of World War I by creating his contemporary version of a World War I ‘dazzle-ship’ in Liverpool’s Albert Dock, adjoining the river Mersey. A dazzle-ship’s abstract geometric-form of camouflage was devised in 1917 (and applied by the English artist Edward Wadsworth) to distort optically a ship’s shape, so that it was difficult for German submarines to calculate the course it was travelling on, and so know from what angle to attack. But so far the Venezuelan artist’s ‘take’ on a dazzle-ship has been met by Scouse wits comparing it to a tube of Refreshers, the 1970s British sweet!