M. C. Escher | |
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![]() Self-portrait, 1929
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Born | Maurits Cornelis Escher 17 June 1898 Leeuwarden, Netherlands |
Died | 27 March 1972 Laren, Netherlands |
(aged 73)
Nationality | Dutch |
Education | Haarlem School of Architecture and Decorative Arts |
Known for | Drawing, printmaking |
Notable work | Relativity, Waterfall, Hand with Reflecting Sphere |
Awards | Knighthood of the Order of Orange-Nassau |
Maurits Cornelis Escher (Dutch pronunciation: [ˈmʌurɪts kɔrˈneːlɪs ˈɛʃər] ( listen);[1] 17 June 1898 – 27 March 1972) was a Dutch graphic artist who made mathematically inspired woodcuts, lithographs, and mezzotints.
Early in his career he drew inspiration from nature, making studies of insects, landscapes, and plants such as lichens, all of which he reused as details in his artworks. He travelled in Italy and Spain, sketching buildings, townscapes, architecture and the tilings of the Alhambra and La Mezquita, Cordoba, and became steadily more interested in their mathematical structure.
His work features mathematical objects and operations including impossible objects, explorations of infinity, reflection, symmetry, perspective, truncated and stellated polyhedra, hyperbolic geometry, and tessellations. Although Escher considered that he had no mathematical ability, he both interacted with the practising mathematicians George Pólya, Roger Penrose, and Harold Coxeter, read mathematical papers by these authors and by the crystallographer Friedrich Haag, and conducted his own mathematical research into tessellation.
Escher's art became popular, both among scientists and mathematicians, and in popular culture. Apart from being used in a variety of technical papers, his work has appeared on the covers of many books and albums. He featured as one of the major inspirations of Douglas Hofstadter's 1979 book Gödel, Escher, Bach.
Contents
Early life
Maurits Cornelis[a] was born in Leeuwarden, Friesland, in a house that forms part of the Princessehof Ceramics Museum today. He was the youngest son of civil engineer George Arnold Escher and his second wife, Sara Gleichman. In 1903, the family moved to Arnhem, where he attended primary school and secondary school until 1918 when he went to the technical college in Delft.[2]
Known to his friends and family as "Mauk", he was a sickly child, and was placed in a special school at the age of seven and failed the second grade.[3] Although he excelled at drawing, his grades were generally poor. He also took carpentry and piano lessons until he was thirteen years old. From 1919 to 1922, Escher attended the Haarlem School of Architecture and Decorative Arts, learning drawing and the art of making woodcuts.[2] He briefly studied architecture, but he failed a number of subjects (partly due to a persistent skin infection) and switched to decorative arts.[3] He studied under Samuel Jessurun de Mesquita.[4]
Later life
In 1922, an important year of his life, Escher traveled through Italy, visiting Florence, San Gimignano, Volterra, Siena, Ravello. In the same year he traveled through Spain, visiting Madrid, Toledo, and Granada.[2] He was impressed by the Italian countryside, and in Granada by the Moorish architecture of the fourteenth-century Alhambra. The intricate decorative designs of the Alhambra, based on geometrical symmetries featuring interlocking repetitive patterns in the coloured tiles or sculpted into the walls and ceilings, triggered his interest in the mathematics of tessellation, and became a powerful influence on his work.[5]
Escher returned to Italy, and lived in Rome from 1923 to 1935. He travelled frequently, visiting (among other places) Viterbo in 1926, the Abruzzi in 1927 and 1929, Corsica in 1928 and 1933, Calabria in 1930, the Amalfi coast in 1931 and 1934, Cargano and Sicily in 1932 and 1935. The townscapes and landscapes of these places feature prominently in his artworks. In May and June of 1936, Escher travelled back to Spain, revisiting the Alhambra and making detailed drawings of its mosaic patterns; he also studied the architecture of the Mezquita, the Moorish mosque of Cordoba. This turned out to be the last of his long study journeys; after 1937, his artworks were created in his studio rather than in the field. His art correspondingly changed sharply from being mainly observational, with a strong emphasis on the realistic details of things seen in nature and architecture, to being the product of his geometric analysis and his visual imagination. All the same, even his early work already shows his interest in the nature of space, the unusual, perspective, and multiple points of view.[6]
While in Italy, Escher met Jetta Umiker, whom he married in 1924. The couple settled in Rome where their first son, Giorgio (George) Arnaldo Escher, named after his grandfather, was born. Escher and Jetta later had two more sons: Arthur and Jan.[2][7]
In 1935, the political climate in Italy (under Mussolini) became unacceptable to Escher. He had no interest in politics, finding it impossible to involve himself with any ideals other than the expressions of his own concepts through his own particular medium, but he was averse to fanaticism and hypocrisy. When his eldest son, George, was forced at the age of nine to wear a Ballila uniform in school, the family left Italy and moved to Château-d'Œx, Switzerland, where they remained for two years.[8]
![](https://web.archive.org/web/20151105215045im_/http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/1/16/Escher_Snakes.jpg/220px-Escher_Snakes.jpg)
Escher, who had been very fond of and inspired by the landscapes in Italy, was decidedly unhappy in Switzerland. In 1937, the family moved again, to Uccle, a suburb of Brussels, Belgium.[2] World War II forced them to move in January 1941, this time to Baarn, Netherlands, where Escher lived until 1970.[2] Most of Escher's best-known works date from this period. The sometimes cloudy, cold and wet weather of the Netherlands allowed him to focus intently on his work.[2] After 1953, Escher lectured widely. A planned series of lectures in North America in 1962 was cancelled after an illness, and he stopped creating artworks for a time,[2] but the illustrations and text for the lectures were later published as part of the book Escher on Escher.[9]
In July 1969 he finished his last work, a large woodcut with threefold rotational symmetry called Snakes, in which snakes wind through a pattern of linked rings. These shrink to infinity toward both the center and the edge of a circle. It was exceptionally elaborate, being printed using three blocks, each rotated three times about the center of the image and precisely aligned to avoid gaps and overlaps, for a total of nine print operations for each finished print. The image encapsulates Escher's love of symmetry, of interlocking patterns, and at the end of his life, of his approach to infinity.[10][11][12] The care Escher took in creating and printing this woodcut can be seen in a video recording.[13]
Escher moved to the Rosa Spier Huis in Laren in 1970, an artists' retirement home in which he had his own studio. He died at the home on 27 March 1972, aged 73.[2]
Mathematically-inspired work
![](https://web.archive.org/web/20151105215045im_/http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/ab/Parmigianino_Selfportrait.jpg/220px-Parmigianino_Selfportrait.jpg)
Escher's work is inescapably mathematical. This has caused a disconnect between his full-on popular fame and the reserve or lack of esteem with which he has been viewed in the art world. His originality and mastery of graphic techniques is respected, but his works have been thought too intellectual and insufficiently lyrical. The advent of movements such as conceptual art has to a degree reversed the art world's attitude to the intellectual and the lyrical in art, but this did not rehabilitate Escher because traditional critics still disliked his narrative themes and his use of perspective. However, these same qualities made his work highly attractive to the public.[14] Escher is not the first artist to explore mathematical themes: Parmigianino had explored spherical geometry and reflection in his 1524 Self-Portrait, depicting his own image in a curved mirror, while William Hogarth's 1754 frontispiece to Dr Brook Taylor's Method of Perspective foreshadows Escher's playful exploration of errors in perspective.[15] Only with 20th century movements such as Cubism, De Stijl, Dadaism and Surrealism did mainstream art start to explore Escher-like ways of looking at the world with multiple simultaneous viewpoints.[14]
Tessellation
![](https://web.archive.org/web/20151105215045im_/http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/12/Alhambra-p3-closeup.jpg/220px-Alhambra-p3-closeup.jpg)
In his early years, Escher sketched landscapes and nature. He also sketched insects such as ants, bees, grasshoppers and mantises,[17] which appeared frequently in his later work. His early love of Roman and Italian landscapes and of nature created an interest in tessellation, which he called Regular Division of the Plane; this became the title of his 1958 book, complete with reproductions of a series of woodcuts based on tessellations of the plane, in which he described the systematic buildup of mathematical designs in his artworks. He wrote "Mathematicians have opened the gate leading to an extensive domain."[18]
After his 1936 journey to the Alhambra and to La Mezquita, Cordoba, where he sketched the Moorish architecture and the tessellated mosaic decorations,[19] Escher began to explore the properties and possibilities of tessellation using geometric grids as the basis for his sketches. He then extended these to form complex interlocking designs, for example with animals such as birds, fish, and reptiles.[20] One of his first attempts at a tessellation was his pencil, India ink and watercolour Study of Regular Division of the Plane with Reptiles (1939), constructed on a hexagonal grid. The heads of the red, green and white reptiles meet at a vertex; the tails, legs and sides of the animals exactly interlock. It was used as the basis for his 1943 lithograph Reptiles.[21]
![](https://web.archive.org/web/20151105215045im_/http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/3/33/Study_of_Regular_Division_of_the_Plane_with_Reptiles.jpg/220px-Study_of_Regular_Division_of_the_Plane_with_Reptiles.jpg)
His first study of mathematics began with papers by George Pólya[22] and by the crystallographer Friedrich Haag[23] on plane symmetry groups, sent to him by his brother Berend (known as Beer).[24] He carefully studied the 17 wallpaper groups, and created periodic tilings with 43 drawings of different types of symmetry. From this point on he developed a mathematical approach to expressions of symmetry in his art works. Starting in 1937, he created woodcuts based on the 17 groups. His Metamorphosis I (1937) began a series of designs that told a story through the use of pictures. In Metamorphosis I, he transformed convex polygons into regular patterns in a plane to form a human motif. He extended the approach in his piece Metamorphosis III, which is four metres long.[25]
In 1941 and 1942, Escher summarized his findings for his own artistic use in a sketchbook, which he labeled (following Haag) Regelmatige vlakverdeling in asymmetrische congruente veelhoeken ("Regular division of the plane with asymmetric congruent polygons").[26] The mathematician Doris Schattschneider unequivocally described this notebook as recording "a methodical investigation that can only be termed mathematical research."[24] She defined the research questions he was following as
(1) What are the possible shapes for a tile that can produce a regular division of the plane, that is, a tile that can fill the plane with its congruent images such that every tile is surrounded in the same manner?
(2) Moreover, in what ways are the edges of such a tile related to each other by isometries?[24]
Geometries
![](https://web.archive.org/web/20151105215045im_/http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/a/a3/Escher%27s_Relativity.jpg/220px-Escher%27s_Relativity.jpg)
Although Escher did not have mathematical training—his understanding of mathematics was largely visual and intuitive—his art had a strong mathematical component, and several of the worlds which he drew were built around impossible objects After 1924, Escher turned to sketching landscapes in Italy and Corsica with irregular perspectives that are impossible in natural form. His first print of an impossible reality was Still Life and Street (1937); impossible stairs and multiple visual and gravitational perspectives feature in popular works such as Relativity (1953). House of Stairs (1951) attracted the interest of the mathematician Roger Penrose and his father the biologist Lionel Penrose. In 1956 they published a paper, "Impossible Objects: A Special Type of Visual Illusion" and later sent Escher a copy. Escher replied, admiring the Penroses' continuously rising flights of steps, and enclosed a print of Ascending and Descending (1960). The paper also contained the tribar or Penrose triangle, which Escher used repeatedly in his lithograph of a building that appears to function as a perpetual motion machine, Waterfall (1961).[27][28][29][30]
Escher was interested enough in Hieronymus Bosch's 1500 triptych The Garden of Earthly Delights to recreate part of its right-hand panel, Hell, as a lithograph in 1935. He reused the figure of a Mediaeval woman in a two-pointed headdress and a long gown in his lithograph Belvedere in 1958; the image is, like many of his other "extraordinary invented places",[31] peopled with "jesters, knaves and contemplators".[31] Escher was thus not only interested in possible or impossible geometry, but was in his own words a "reality enthusiast";[31] he combined "formal astonishment with a vivid and idiosyncratic vision."[31]
Escher worked primarily in the media of lithographs and woodcuts, though the few mezzotints he made are considered to be masterpieces of the technique. In his graphic art, he portrayed mathematical relationships among shapes, figures and space. Integrated into his prints were mirror images of cones, spheres, cubes, rings and spirals.[32]
Escher was also fascinated by mathematical objects like the Möbius strip, which has only one surface. His wood engraving Möbius Strip II (1963) depicts a chain of ants marching for ever around over what at any one place are the two opposite faces of the object—which are seen on inspection to be parts of the strip's single surface. In Escher's own words[33]
An endless ring-shaped band usually has two distinct surfaces, one inside and one outside. Yet on this strip nine red ants crawl after each other and travel the front side as well as the reverse side. Therefore the strip has only one surface.[33]
The mathematical influence in his work became prominent after 1936, when, having boldly asked the Adria Shipping Company if he could sail with them as travelling artist in return for making drawings of their ships, they surprisingly agreed, and he sailed the Mediterranean, becoming interested in order and symmetry. Escher described this journey through the Mediterranean as "the richest source of inspiration I have ever tapped."[34]
Platonic and other solids
![](https://web.archive.org/web/20151105215045im_/http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/33/Universiteit_Twente_Mesa_Plus_Escher_Object.jpg/220px-Universiteit_Twente_Mesa_Plus_Escher_Object.jpg)
Escher often incorporated three-dimensional objects such as the Platonic solids such as spheres, tetrahedons and cubes into his works, as well as mathematical objects like cylinders and stellated polyhedra. In the print Reptiles, he combined two and three-dimensional images. In one of his papers, Escher emphasized the importance of dimensionality:[35]
The flat shape irritates me - I feel like telling my objects, you are too fictitious, lying there next to each other static and frozen: do something, come off the paper and show me what you are capable of! ... So I make them come out of the plane. ... My objects ... may finally return to the plane and disappear into their place of origin.[35]
Escher's artwork is especially well liked by mathematicians like Doris Schattschneider and scientists like Roger Penrose, who enjoy his use of polyhedra and geometric distortions.[24] For example, in Gravitation, animals climb around a stellated dodecahedron.[36]
The two towers of Waterfall's impossible building are topped with compound polyhedra, one a compound of three cubes, the other a stellated rhombic dodecahedron known as Escher's solid. Escher had used this solid in his 1948 woodcut Stars, which also contains all five of the Platonic solids and various stellated solids, representing stars; the central solid is animated by chameleons climbing through the frame as it whirls in space. Escher possessed a 6 cm refracting telescope and was a keen enough amateur astronomer to have recorded observations of binary stars.[37][38][39]
Levels of reality
![](https://web.archive.org/web/20151105215045im_/http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/b/ba/DrawingHands.jpg/220px-DrawingHands.jpg)
Escher's artistic expression was created from images in his mind, rather than directly from observations and travels to other countries. His interest in the multiple levels of reality in art is seen in works such as Drawing Hands (1948), where two hands are shown, each drawing the other. The critic Steven Poole commented that[31]
It is a neat depiction of one of Escher’s enduring fascinations: the contrast between the two-dimensional flatness of a sheet of paper and the illusion of three-dimensional volume that can be created with certain marks. In Drawing Hands, space and the flat plane coexist, each born from and returning to the other, the black magic of the artistic illusion made creepily manifest.[31]
Infinity and hyperbolic geometry
![](https://web.archive.org/web/20151105215045im_/http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/d/da/Schattschneider_Reconstruction_of_Escher%27s_Coxeter_Diagram.jpg/310px-Schattschneider_Reconstruction_of_Escher%27s_Coxeter_Diagram.jpg)
In 1954, the International Congress of Mathematicians met in Amsterdam, and N. G. de Bruin organized a display of Escher's work at the Stedelijk Museum for the participants. Both Roger Penrose and H. S. M. Coxeter were deeply impressed with Escher's intuitive grasp of mathematics. Inspired by Relativity, Penrose devised his tribar, and his father, Lionel Penrose, devised an endless staircase. Roger Penrose sent sketches of both objects to Escher, and the cycle of invention was closed when Escher then created the perpetual motion machine of Waterfall and the endless march of the monk-figures of Ascending and Descending.[24] In 1957, Coxeter obtained Escher's permission to use two of his drawings in his paper "Crystal symmetry and its generalizations".[24][40] He sent Escher a copy of the paper; Escher recorded that Coxeter's figure of a hyperbolic tessellation "gave me quite a shock": the infinite regular repetition of the tiles in the hyperbolic plane, growing rapidly smaller towards the edge of the circle, was precisely what he wanted to allow him to represent infinity on a two-dimensional plane.[41][24]
![](https://web.archive.org/web/20151105215045im_/http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/5/55/Escher_Circle_Limit_III.jpg/220px-Escher_Circle_Limit_III.jpg)
Escher carefully studied Coxeter's figure, marking it up to analyse the successively smaller circles[b] with which (he deduced) it had been constructed. He then constructed a diagram, which he sent to Coxeter, showing his analysis; Coxeter confirmed it was correct, but disappointed Escher with his highly technical reply. All the same, Escher persisted with hyperbolic tiling, which he called "Coxetering".[24] Among the results were the series of wood engravings Circle Limit I–IV.[24] In 1959, Coxeter published his finding that these works were extraordinarily accurate: "Escher got it absolutely right to the millimeter."[42]
Honours and distinctions
Escher was awarded the Knighthood of the Order of Orange-Nassau in 1955.[2]
Legacy
Escher's special way of thinking and rich graphics have had a continuous influence in mathematics and art, as well as in popular culture.
In art collections
The Escher intellectual property is controlled by the M.C. Escher Company. Exhibitions of his artworks are managed separately by the M.C. Escher Foundation.[c]
The primary institutional collections of original works by M.C. Escher are the Escher Museum in The Hague; the National Gallery of Art (Washington, DC);[45] the National Gallery of Canada (Ottawa);[46] the Israel Museum (Jerusalem);[47] and the Huis ten Bosch (Nagasaki, Japan).[48]
Exhibitions
![](https://web.archive.org/web/20151105215045im_/http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/2/28/Escher_Poster_Dulwich_Picture_Gallery_2015.jpg/170px-Escher_Poster_Dulwich_Picture_Gallery_2015.jpg)
Despite wide international interest, no major exhibition of Escher's work was held in Britain until 2015, when the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art ran one in Edinburgh from June to September 2015,[49] moving in October 2015 to the Dulwich Picture Gallery, London. The poster for the exhibition is based on Hand with Reflecting Sphere, 1935, which shows Escher in his house reflected in a handheld sphere, thus illustrating the artist, his interest in levels of reality in art (e.g., is the hand in the foreground more real than the reflected one?), perspective, and spherical geometry.[50][51][52]
- Christchurch Art Gallery, New Zealand, 1977[53]
- Israel Museum, Jerusalem, 1995–1996[54]
- Capitoline Museums, Rome, 2004–2005[55]
- Art Gallery of Alberta, 2010[56]
- Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil, Rio de Janeiro, 2011[57]
- Akron Art Museum, Ohio, 2011[58]
- Glenbow Museum, 2013[59]
- Moscow Museum of Modern Art, 2013–2014[60]
- National Palace Museum, Taiwan, 2014[61]
- Chiostro del Bramante, Rome, 2014–2015[62]
- National Gallery of Canada, 2014–2015[63]
- Currier Museum of Art, New Hampshire, 2014–2015[64]
- Salvador Dalí Museum, Florida, August 2015–January 2016[65]
- North Carolina Museum of Art, October 2015–January 2016[66]
In mathematics and science
Doris Schattschneider identifies 11 strands of mathematical and scientific research anticipated or directly inspired by Escher. These are the classification of regular tilings using the edge relationships of tiles; two-color and two-motif tilings (counterchange symmetry or antisymmetry); color symmetry (in crystallography); metamorphosis or topological change; covering surfaces with symmetric patterns; Escher's algorithm (for generating patterns using decorated squares); creating tile shapes; local versus global definitions of regularity; symmetry of a tiling induced by the symmetry of a tile; orderliness not induced by symmetry groups; the filling of the central void in Escher's lithograph Print Gallery by H. Lenstra and B. de Smit.[24]
Gödel, Escher, Bach by Douglas Hofstadter,[67] published in 1979, discusses the ideas of self-reference and strange loops, drawing on a wide range of artistic and scientific sources including Escher's art and the music of J. S. Bach.
The asteroid 4444 Escher was named in Escher's honor in 1985.[68]
In popular culture
Escher's works have appeared on many album covers including The Scaffold's 1969 L the P with Ascending and Descending; Mott the Hoople's eponymous 1969 record with Reptiles, Beaver & Krause's 1970 In A Wild Sanctuary with Three Worlds; and Mandrake Memorial's 1970 Puzzle with House of Stairs and (inside) Curl Up.[d] His works have similarly been used on many book covers, including Edwin Abbott's Flatland which used Three Spheres; E. H. Gombrich's Meditations on a Hobby Horse with Horseman; Pamela Hall's Heads You Lose with Plane Filling 1; Patrick A. Horton's Mastering the Power of Story with Drawing Hands; Erich Gamma et al's Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-oriented software with Swans; and Arthur Markman's Knowledge Representation with Reptiles.[e]
Selected works
- Trees, ink (1920)
- St. Bavo's, Haarlem, ink (1920)
- Flor de Pascua (The Easter Flower), woodcut/book illustrations (1921)
- Eight Heads, woodcut (1922)
- Dolphins also known as Dolphins in Phosphorescent Sea, woodcut (1923)
- Tower of Babel, woodcut (1928)
- Street in Scanno, Abruzzi, lithograph (1930)
- Castrovalva, lithograph (1930)
- The Bridge, lithograph (1930)
- Palizzi, Calabria, woodcut (1930)
- Pentedattilo, Calabria, lithograph (1930)
- Atrani, Coast of Amalfi, lithograph (1931)
- Ravello and the Coast of Amalfi, lithograph (1931)
- Covered Alley in Atrani, Coast of Amalfi, wood engraving (1931)
- Phosphorescent Sea, lithograph (1933)
- Still Life with Spherical Mirror, lithograph (1934)
- Hand with Reflecting Sphere also known as Self-Portrait in Spherical Mirror, lithograph (1935)
- Inside St. Peter's, wood engraving (1935)
- Portrait of G.A. Escher, lithograph (1935)
- “Hell", lithograph, (copied from a painting by Hieronymus Bosch) (1935)
- Regular Division of the Plane, series of drawings that continued until the 1960s (1936)
- Still Life and Street (his first impossible reality), woodcut (1937)
- Metamorphosis I, woodcut (1937)
- Day and Night, woodcut (1938)
- Cycle, lithograph (1938)
- Sky and Water I, woodcut (1938)
- Sky and Water II, lithograph (1938)
- Metamorphosis II, woodcut (1939–1940)
- Verbum (Earth, Sky and Water), lithograph (1942)
- Reptiles, lithograph (1943)
- Ant, lithograph (1943)
- Encounter, lithograph (1944)
- Doric Columns, wood engraving (1945)
- Balcony, lithograph (1945)
- Three Spheres I, wood engraving (1945)
- Magic Mirror, lithograph (1946)
- Three Spheres II, lithograph (1946)
- Another World Mezzotint also known as Other World Gallery, mezzotint (1946)
- Eye, mezzotint (1946)
- Another World also known as Other World, wood engraving and woodcut (1947)
- Crystal, mezzotint (1947)
- Up and Down also known as High and Low, lithograph (1947)
- Drawing Hands, lithograph (1948)
- Dewdrop, mezzotint (1948)
- Stars, wood engraving (1948)
- Double Planetoid, wood engraving (1949)
- Order and Chaos (Contrast), lithograph (1950)
- Rippled Surface, woodcut and linoleum cut (1950)
- Curl-up, lithograph (1951)
- House of Stairs, lithograph (1951)
- House of Stairs II, lithograph (1951)
- Puddle, woodcut (1952)
- Gravitation, (1952)
- Dragon, woodcut lithograph and watercolor (1952)
- Cubic Space Division, lithograph (1952)
- Relativity, lithograph (1953)
- Tetrahedral Planetoid, woodcut (1954)
- Compass Rose (Order and Chaos II), lithograph (1955)
- Convex and Concave, lithograph (1955)
- Three Worlds, lithograph (1955)
- Print Gallery, lithograph (1956)
- Mosaic II, lithograph (1957)
- Cube with Magic Ribbons, lithograph (1957)
- Belvedere, lithograph (1958)
- Sphere Spirals, woodcut (1958)
- Circle Limit III, woodcut (1959)
- Ascending and Descending, lithograph (1960)
- Waterfall, lithograph (1961)
- Möbius Strip II (Red Ants) woodcut (1963)
- Knot, pencil and crayon (1966)
- Metamorphosis III, woodcut (1967–1968)
- Snakes, woodcut (1969)
Notes
- ^ "We named him Maurits Cornelis after S.'s [Sara's] beloved uncle Van Hall, and called him 'Mauk' for short ....", Diary of Escher's father, quoted in M. C. Escher: His Life and Complete Graphic Work, Abradale Press, 1981, p. 9.
- ^ Schattschneider notes that Coxeter observed in March 1964 that the white arcs in Circle Limit III "were not, as he and others had assumed, badly rendered hyperbolic lines but rather were branches of equidistant curves."[24]
- ^ In 1969, Escher's business advisor, Jan W. Vermeulen, author of a biography on the artist, established the M.C. Escher Foundation, and transferred into this entity virtually all of Escher's unique work as well as hundreds of his original prints. These works were lent by the Foundation to the Hague Museum. Upon Escher's death, his three sons dissolved the Foundation, and they became partners in the ownership of the art works. In 1980, this holding was sold to an American art dealer and the Hague Museum. The Museum obtained all of the documentation and the smaller portion of the art works. The copyrights remained the possession of Escher's three sons – who later sold them to Cordon Art, a Dutch company. Control was subsequently transferred to The M.C. Escher Company B.V. of Baarn, Netherlands, which licenses use of the copyrights on all of Escher's art and on his spoken and written text. A related entity, the M.C. Escher Foundation of Baarn, promotes Escher's work by organizing exhibitions, publishing books and producing films about his life and work.[43][44]
- ^ These and further albums are listed by Coulthart.[69]
- ^ These and further books are listed by Bailey.[70]
References
- ^ Duden Aussprachewörterbuch (6 ed.). Mannheim: Bibliographisches Institut & F.A. Brockhaus AG. 2005. ISBN 3-411-04066-1.
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j "Chronology". World of Escher. Retrieved 1 November 2015.
- ^ a b Barbara E, PhD. Bryden. Sundial: Theoretical Relationships Between Psychological Type, Talent, And Disease. Gainesville, Fla: Center for Applications of Psychological Type. ISBN 0-935652-46-9.
- ^ Locher, 1974. p. 5
- ^ Roza, Greg (2005). An Optical Artist: Exploring Patterns and Symmetry. Rosen Classroom. p. 20. ISBN 978-1-4042-5117-5.
- ^ Locher, 1974. p. 5
- ^ "Escher". Geom.uiuc.edu. Retrieved 7 December 2013.
- ^ Ernst, Bruno, The Magic Mirror of M.C. Escher, Taschen, 1978; p. 15
- ^ Escher, M. C. (1989). Escher on Escher: Exploring the Infinite. Harry N. Abrams. ISBN 978-0-810-92414-7.
- ^ Locher, 1974. p. 151
- ^ "Snakes". M. C. Escher. Retrieved 5 November 2015.
- ^ Cucker, Felipe (25 April 2013). Manifold Mirrors: The Crossing Paths of the Arts and Mathematics. Cambridge University Press. pp. 106–107. ISBN 978-0-521-42963-4.
- ^ "M.C. Escher - Creating The "Snakes" Woodcut". YouTube. Retrieved 5 November 2015.
- ^ a b Locher, 1974. p. 13
- ^ Locher, 1974. pp. 11–12
- ^ Locher, 1974. p. 17
- ^ Locher, 1974. pp. 62–63
- ^ https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=m8lB8OWyVpsC&pg=PT119&lpg=PT119 (2012). Master the GRE 2013. Peterson's. p. 119. ISBN 978-0-7689-3681-0.
- ^ Locher, 1974. pp. 17, 70–71
- ^ Locher, 1974. pp. 79–85
- ^ Locher, 1974. p. 18
- ^ Pólya, G. (1924). "Über die Analogie der Kristallsymmetrie in der Ebene". Zeitschrift fuer Kristallographie (in German) 60: 278–282.
- ^ Haag, Friedrich (1911). "Die regelmäßigen Planteilungen" (PDF). Zeitschrift fuer Kristallographie (in German) 49: 360–369.
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Schattschneider, Doris (2010). "The Mathematical Side of M. C. Escher" (PDF). Notices of the AMS (American Mathematical Society) 57 (6): 706–718.
- ^ Locher, 1974. p. 84
- ^ Barry Cipra (1998). Paul Zorn, ed. What's Happening in the Mathematical Sciences, Volume 4. American Mathematical Society. p. 103. ISBN 0-8218-0766-8.
- ^ Seckel, Al (2004). Masters of Deception: Escher, Dalí & the Artists of Optical Illusion. Sterling. pp. 81–94, 262. ISBN 978-1-4027-0577-9. Chapter 5 is on Escher.
- ^ Penrose, L.S.; Penrose, R. (1958). "Impossible objects: A special type of visual illusion". British Journal of Psychology 49: 31–33. doi:10.1111/j.2044-8295.1958.tb00634.x. PMID 13536303.
- ^ Kirousis, Lefteris M.; Papadimitriou, Christos H. (1985). "The complexity of recognizing polyhedral scenes". 26th Annual Symposium on Foundations of Computer Science (FOCS 1985): 175–185. doi:10.1109/sfcs.1985.59.
- ^ Cooper, Martin (2008). "Tractability of Drawing Interpretation". Line Drawing Interpretation. Springer-Verlag. pp. 217–230. doi:10.1007/978-1-84800-229-6_9. ISBN 978-1-84800-229-6.
- ^ a b c d e f Poole, Steven (20 June 2015). "The impossible world of MC Escher". The Guardian. Retrieved 2 November 2015.
- ^ "The Official M.C. Escher Website – Biography". Retrieved 7 December 2013.
- ^ a b "Möbius Strip II, February 1963". Collections. National Gallery of Canada. Retrieved 2 November 2015. which cites Escher, M. C. (2001). M. C. Escher, the Graphic Work. Taschen.
- ^ O'Connor, J. J.; Robertson, E. F. (May 2000). "Maurits Cornelius Escher". Biographies. University of St Andrews. Retrieved 2 November 2015. which cites Strauss, S. (9 May 1996). "M C Escher". The Globe and Mail.
- ^ a b Emmer, Michele; Schattschneider, Doris (2007). M.C. Escher’s Legacy: A Centennial Celebration. Springer. pp. 182–183. ISBN 978-3-540-28849-7.
- ^ Hargittai, István (23 May 2014). Symmetry: Unifying Human Understanding. Elsevier Science. p. 128. ISBN 978-1-4831-4952-3.
- ^ Locher, 1974. p. 104
- ^ Beech, Martin. "Escher's Stars". Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada 86: 169–177.
- ^ Coxeter, H. S. M. (1985). "A special book review: M. C. Escher: His life and complete graphic work". The Mathematical Intelligencer 7 (1): 59–69. doi:10.1007/BF03023010.
- ^ Coxeter, H. S. M. Coxeter (June 1957). "Crystal symmetry and its generalizations". A Symposium on Symmetry, Transactions of the Royal Society of Canada 51 (3, section 3): 1–13.
- ^ Malkevitch, Joseph. "Mathematics and Art. 4. Mathematical artists and artist mathematicians". American Mathematical Society. Retrieved 1 September 2015.
- ^ O'Connor, J. J.; Robertson, E. F. (May 2000). "Maurits Cornelius Escher". University of St Andrews. Retrieved 2 November 2015. which cites Schattschneider, D. (1994). Guy, R. K.; Woodrow, R. E., ed. Escher: A mathematician in spite of himself. The Lighter Side of Mathematics (Washington: The Mathematical Association of America). pp. 91–100.
- ^ "Copyrights&Licensing". M.C. Escher. Retrieved 2 November 2015.
- ^ "M.C. Escher Foundation". M.C. Escher. Retrieved 2 November 2015.
- ^ "Tour: M.C. Escher — Life and Work". National Gallery of Art. Retrieved 4 November 2015.
- ^ "Collections: M.C. Escher". National Gallery of Canada. Retrieved 4 November 2015.
- ^ "May 2013 (newsletter)". Israel Museum Jerusalem. Retrieved 4 November 2015.
- ^ "M. C. Escher" (in Japanese). Huis Ten Bosch Museum, Nagasaki. Retrieved 4 November 2015.
- ^ "The Amazing World of M.C. Escher". National Galleries Scotland. Retrieved 1 November 2015.
- ^ "The Amazing World of M.C. Escher". Dulwich Picture Gallery. Retrieved 1 November 2015.
- ^ "Hand with Reflecting Sphere, 1935". The Collection, National Gallery of Art. National Gallery of Art, Washington. Retrieved 1 November 2015.
- ^ "M.C. Escher — Life and Work". The Collection, National Gallery of Art. National Gallery of Art, Washington. Retrieved 1 November 2015.
Escher and the interior of his studio in Rome are reflected in the mirrored sphere that he holds in his hand. Escher's preoccupation with mirrored reflections and visual illusion belongs to a tradition of northern European art established in the fifteenth century.
- ^ Christchurch Art Gallery, New Zealand
- ^ The Israel Museum, Jerusalem
- ^ Musei Capitolini, Rome
- ^ Art Gallery of Alberta
- ^ Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil, Rio de Janeiro
- ^ Akron Art Museum, Ohio
- ^ Glenbow
- ^ Moscow Museum of Modern Art
- ^ National Palace Museum, Taiwan
- ^ Chiostro del Bramante, Rome
- ^ National Gallery of Canada
- ^ Currier Museum of Art, New Hampshire
- ^ The Dali Museum, Florida
- ^ North Carolina Museum of Art
- ^ Hofstadter, Douglas R. (1999) [1979], Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid, Basic Books, ISBN 0-465-02656-7
- ^ Schmadel, Lutz D. (2012). Dictionary of Minor Planet Names. Springer. p. 359. ISBN 978-3-642-29718-2.
- ^ Coulthart, John. "MC Escher album covers". Retrieved 2 November 2015.
- ^ Bailey, David. "M. C. Escher Miscellany".
Further reading
Books
- Ernst, Bruno; Escher, M. C. (1995). The Magic Mirror of M. C. Escher. Taschen America. ISBN 1-886155-00-3 Escher's art with commentary by Ernst on Escher's life and art, including several pages on his use of polyhedra.
- Escher, M. C. (1971) The Graphic Work of M. C. Escher, Ballantine. Includes Escher's own commentary.
- Locher, J. L. (1971). The World of M. C. Escher. Abrams. ASIN B003VZPMWC
- Locher, J. L., ed. (1981) M. C. Escher: His Life and Complete Graphic Work, Amsterdam.
- O'Connor, J. J. (17 June 2005) Escher. University of St Andrews.
- Schattschneider, Doris & Walker, Wallace. (1987) M. C. Escher Kaleidocycles, Petaluma, California, Pomegranate Communications ISBN 0-906212-28-6.
- Schattschneider, Doris (2004). M. C. Escher : Visions of Symmetry, New York: Harry N. Abrams, 2004. ISBN 0-8109-4308-5.
- Schattschneider, Doris & Emmer, Michele, eds (2003). M. C. Escher's Legacy: a Centennial Celebration; collection of articles from the M. C. Escher Centennial Conference, Rome, 1998 / Berlin; London: Springer-Verlag. ISBN 3-540-42458-X.
- "Escher, M. C." in: The World Book Encyclopedia; 10th ed. 2001.
Media
- Escher, M. C. The Fantastic World of M. C. Escher, Video collection of examples of the development of his art, and interviews, Director, Michele Emmer.
External links
- "M.C. Escher official website".
- "Math and the Art of M.C. Escher". USA: SLU.
- Artful Mathematics: The Heritage of M. C. Escher (PDF). USA: AMS.
- Escherization problem and its solution. CA: University of Waterloo.
- "Escher for Real". IL: Technion. — physical replicas of some of Escher's "impossible" designs
- "M.C. Escher: Life and Work". USA: NGA.
- "US Copyright Protection for UK Artists". UK. Copyright issue regarding Escher from the Artquest Artlaw archive.
- Schattschneider, Doris (June–July 2010). "The Mathematical Side of M. C. Escher" (PDF). Notices of the American Mathematical Society (USA) 57 (6): 706–18. Retrieved 9 July 2010.
- Gallery of tessellations by M.C. Escher
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