MIND GAMES WITH THE INNER EYE

The Consent
Late in November, on a single night
Not even near to freezing, the ginkgo trees
That stand along the walk drop all their leaves
In one consent, and neither to rain nor to wind
But as though to time alone: the golden and green
Leaves litter the lawn today, that yesterday
Had spread aloft their fluttering fans of light.

What signal from the stars? What senses took it in?
What in those wooden motives so decided
To strike their leaves, to down their leaves,
Rebellion or surrender? and if this
Can happen thus, what race shall be exempt?
What use to learn the lessons taught by time,
If a star at any time may tell us: Now. ( Howard Nemerov )

”What I give form to in daylight is only one percent of what I’ve seen in darkness”. M.C. Escher was one of the most remarkable graphic artists of his day. In an Escher print there is usually more than meets the eye; at first glance anyway. That ”more” is the illustration of some mathematical or scientific principle , and often of a philosophical one as well. There is an eerie surrealist aspect to some of his work, but his pictures are less the dreamlike fantasies and explorations of a Salvador Dali or a Renee Magritte than journeys into an objective reality that is both mysterious and enigmatic.

M.C. Escher. Hand with Reflecting Globe. 1935

M.C. Escher. Hand with Reflecting Globe. 1935

In the lithograph self-portrait above, the artist has depicted his hand exactly as he would see it, but his face is reflected in a mirrored globe that also reflects much more of his surroundings than any normal eye could take in. Furhtermore, the artist’s face is trapped at the exact center of the circular image. ”No matter how he turns or twists himself”, Escher said, ”he cannot get away from that center point: the ego remains immovably the focus of his world”. More purely mathematical is the imaginary planet seen  in the shape of a tetrahedron; fout triangular faces, of which two are visible. Because all of his planet’s vertical lines point toward its gravitational center, the print has no top or bottom. It can be turned away and still look the same.

M.C. Escher. Tetahedral Planetoid, woodcut. 1954.

M.C. Escher. Tetahedral Planetoid, woodcut. 1954.

a Maurits Cornelis Escher was born in Leeuwarden, Holland, in 1898. He learned the techniques of his craft in Haarlem, and then spent the next seventeen years perfecting them as he lived, successively, in Italy, Switzerland and Belgium. In 1941 he went back to the Netherlands and settled in Baarn, outside Amsterdam. Over the years he was called upon to design stamps, textiles, wood intarsia panels, murals and even bank notes, but his real vocation has always been the making of prints. At first these were conventional, technically accomplished, more or less true to life renderings of landscape and architecture. But beginning in 1937, or thereabouts, he started to concentrate on the pictorial translation of personal ideas; often of ”mental images which only become understandable to others on being translated into visual images”, or, as he also said, ”of what we can ‘see’ with the inner eye”.

M.C. Escher. magic Mirror. Lithograph. 1946.

M.C. Escher. magic Mirror. Lithograph. 1946.

The result was a series of wonderfully inventive prints which prompted the American poet Howard Nemerov to write, ” carrying to strict logical extremes what geometry tells us about the relations of solids in space, he produces mystery, absurdity, and sometimes terror. ”…”Gestalt psychologists frequently relied on various visual illusions to illustrate the dynamic relation between observer and observed. Nemerov’s own fascination with the visual illusions of Magritte and Escher is due to his belief in their capacity to illustrate the true nature of reality. For example, one of the Escher sketches described in Nemerov’s essay, “Maurits Cornelius Escher,” relies on the same principle as one of the most famous visual illusions, the Moebius band. Although initially appearing to have two sides, the Moebius band, upon closer inspection, has only one; it is thus a particularly apt representation of the relation between inside and out, observer and observed.” ( Davidlavery.net)

Horseman, Woodcut from three blocks. 1946. www.drowlord.com

Horseman, Woodcut from three blocks. 1946. www.drowlord.com

Since 1960  he made only one new print a year, although his entire production was significantly more before, at about eighty prints. They were much prized by mathematicians and scientists, a fact which gave pause to the layman. But one need not know the underlying mathematical principles to enjoy the final image, for as Escher said,

href="http://www.mcescher.com/">”all my works are games. Serious games”.

The fanciful ”Magic Mirror” shows little griffins emerge from a looking glass, run around a ball to the right, and, as they flatten out to two dimensions, arrange themselves in an interlocking pattern on the floor. At the same time the mirror images are passing through the glass and coming to life, for a time behind it. The idea of interlocking figures, or of identical positive and negative spaces, is carried even further in ”Horseman”. This should be looked at as a woven ribbon, in which the colors of one side are revered on the other. At the center, the brown and blue riders meet and fit together as perfectly as the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle.

Escher. Tower of Babel. 1928.

Escher. Tower of Babel. 1928.

The Tower of Babel is an early and relatively simple experiment in perspective. To suggest great height, all the verticals are drawn to a vanishing point in the nadir. Escher depicts the moment when the confusion of tongues came on the builders, halting the ambitious project for the foreseeable future. The intricate exercise in perspective in ”The Intersecting Planes” , consists of three planes, each beginning along one side of the triangle and disappearing to a vanishing point in the angle opposite. This can be seen more readily if the figure is turned around and viewed successively from each of the three sides. The planes are made up of square tiles arranged in checkerboard fashion,with open spaces between them. One set of tiles is striped, the second is black, and the third is white. The open spaces are brown.

Escher. Three intersecting planes. woodcut. two blocks. 1954.

Escher. Three intersecting planes. woodcut. two blocks. 1954.

In ”Waterfall” , there is a type of mill , where water flows uphill and perpetual motion is a reality; an example of Escher’s uncanny ability to fool the eye. Its secret is that it is based on an impossible triangle.

Waterfall. Lithograph. 1961.

Waterfall. Lithograph. 1961.

Equally baffling is the ornate lookout in ”Belvedere”, but here the artist has left a clue in the drawing on the floor and in the impossible construction being studied by the boy on the bench.

''Around 1959 Escher’s work was very close to mathematics and he was inspired by another article he produces the famous Ascending and Descending, which is based on the endless stairway described in the text. ESCHER FOREVER! exhibition you can amuse yourself with interactive attractions, and experience the use of your senses playing with Escher’s Impossible Buildings.''

''Around 1959 Escher’s work was very close to mathematics and he was inspired by another article he produces the famous Ascending and Descending, which is based on the endless stairway described in the text. ESCHER FOREVER! exhibition you can amuse yourself with interactive attractions, and experience the use of your senses playing with Escher’s Impossible Buildings.''

”Inspired by a drawing in a book by the mathematician H.S.M Coxeter, Escher created many beautiful representations of hyperbolic space, as in the woodcut Circle Limit III. This is one of the two kinds of non-Euclidean space, and the model represented in Escher’s work is actually due to the French mathematician Poincaré. To get a sense of what this space is like, imagine that you are actually in the picture itself. As you walk from the center of the picture towards its edge, you will shrink just as the fishes in the picture do, so that to actually reach the edge you have to walk a distance that, to you, seems infinite.

Indeed, to you, being inside this hyperbolic space, it would not be immediately obvious that  anything was unusual about it – after all, you have to walk an infinite distance to get to the edge of ordinary Euclidean space too. However, if you were a careful observer you might begin to notice some odd things, such as that all similar triangles were the same size, and that no straight-sided figure you could draw would have four right angles – that is, this space doesn’t have any squares or rectangles. A strange place indeed!” ( mathacademy.com )

Circle Limit III. 1958

Circle Limit III. 1958

This entry was posted in Cinema/Visual/Audio, Feature Article, Miscellaneous, Modern Arts/Craft, Visual Art/Sculpture/etc. and tagged , , , , , , , , , , . Bookmark the permalink.

One Response to MIND GAMES WITH THE INNER EYE

  1. Knonie says:

    Escher is always an inspiration for me. I love his work, patterns and those perspective related buildings and shapes…

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