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Published: Feb 18, 2009
Category: Art and Photography
I was a teenager when some kid with a bad attitude toward school and a great attitude about art showed me a book of Escher graphics. The images did what Escher intended --- they blew my mind. Soon enough, there were many experiences that produced the same effect, and I moved on.
Decades later, I'm looking at Escher again, as would any clever parent with a child who really likes to draw. Kids love optical illusions. And mathematical magic. And if there's one artist who combines both, it's Maurits Cornelis Escher (1898-1972).
Escher, born in the Netherlands, was an indifferent student but a dedicated draftsman whose exacting vision and precise technique led him to explore the relationship between art and mathematics. In 1922, he visited the Alhambra, a 14th Century castle in Granada, Spain; its intricate carvings and optical tricks inspired him to go deeper into mathematical creation. He'd go on to create 448 lithographs, woodcuts and wood engravings and more than 2,000 drawings and sketches, many of them mathematically-inspired --- and to write so well on the subject that some academics considered him a research mathematician.
With Escher, every image you see is an instant favorite. And a brain-buster. But it's fun, not homework, to trace his method in works like Drawing Hands and Ascending and Descending. And it's thrilling to see exactly how fish become birds, how stairways never end, how water flows uphill. By skewing perspective, Escher tricks the eye.
Fish into birds: Is he “saying” something here? Escher never broadcast his social and political views. His irritation was largely with flat shapes --- "I make them come out of the plane," he said. In the 1930s and 1940s, however, he did put distance between the Nazis and himself. And, for decades after the war, he kept a sketch with the imprint of a German Army boot with his drawing supplies.
As I write, pretty much everyone is focused on Reality, as if money and jobs and houses are all there are. In such a time, it's useful to carve out space for beauty and whimsy, the irrational and the downright silly. It's also good to take a look at the artistry of Escher, who reminds us, with both bluntness and delicacy, how surface reality can trick us.
Of the available books, "The Graphic Work" is just images, very well produced. "The Magic Mirror"offers explanations of his technique. And the "Coloring Book" can delight your kids --- or you.
To see a collection of Escher's art, click here.
To buy “M.C. Escher: The Graphic Work” from Amazon.com, click here.
To buy “The Magic Mirror of M.C. Escher” from Amazon.com, click here.
To buy “M.C. Escher: Coloring Book” from Amazon.com, click here.