9/18/2023 0 Comments Escher impossible shapes![]() ![]() ![]() He filled his notebooks with sketches of buildings and landscapes, fascinated by this mathematical technique.Įarlier this year, a film called Escher: Journey into Infinity looked afresh at this artist, examining how he gained cult status in the US counterculture, with bootleg versions of his work appearing on T-shirts. To the likes of Leonardo da Vinci, perspective was not just art but science. The work reveals his love of perspective, the method of depicting deep space and distance invented in Renaissance Italy. In this powerful engraving, you can clearly see the roots of Escher’s art. We see tiny people on the floor far below, as columns plummet down towards them in rushing, scary perspective. A thickly inked engraving of St Peter’s that he made in 1935 takes a spectacular, god’s-eye view of the Vatican basilica’s vast interior from up inside the dome. These designs would become the building blocks of his deceiving universe. Escher, meanwhile, was in Italy – using traditional printmaking skills to depict timeless cities on picturesque hilltops. In the 1920s, Piet Mondrian and the De Stijl movement were taking Dutch art into pure abstraction. Which way up? … Relativity, created in 1953. Or at least that’s how it seems, initially. His work does seem perfect for the festive season, given it’s all fun and games. The tome has just been reissued in time for Christmas and the 50th anniversary of his death next year. And now we have Kaleidocycles, a Taschen book about the artist featuring paper puzzle kits that allow you to actually build his paradoxical structures at home, unlikely as that may seem. The Dutchman’s illusions have been famous and beloved since the 1950s, when spaced-out fans first started claiming to see hemp plants hidden in his art. Looking into his pictures is like standing on the very edge of a cliff – and being right down at the bottom at the same time. In his mind-boggling creations, dimensions collide and normality dissolves. This is the kind of problem people who are trapped in the geometrically impossible, yet still strangely plausible, worlds of MC Escher have to deal with all the time. It ascends one side, then the next, then the next – and then suddenly you are right back where you started. Y ou are walking up a staircase that winds up to the top of a tall square tower. ![]()
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