EXPANDED IMAGE: M.C. ESCHER

M.C. Escher (1898-1972) was an artist who brought precision of vision and fantasy to his work. The above work entitle Day and Night illustrates how foreground and background become equal and reflect the content of each other. Is there a musical counterpart of this illusion?

Drawing Hands is another famous etching of Escher, providing a metaphor of art flowing from the hands, the flesh extended through the technology of the pen to creating an image of itself on the paper.



Ascending/Descending is the etching I referred to in class with the endless parade on the stairs with two figures who are not part of the "parade": the onlooker who stares up at them, and the figure on the stairs totally non-involved.

Escher's famous drawing Three Spheres I has been utilized in many publications including the landmark book Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid. The concept of mass, collision, and  gravity are conveyed in this compelling image.

Escher also includes also a subtle suggestion of motion as though the sphere is shown in three frames of transformation as mass surrenders to the irresistible force of gravity.

In Escher's work nothing is left to chance.  His work in grounded in mathematics, and reveals the asethetic power of structure and precision .








In Escher's Rind, mass becomes ethereal, floating, and identity is shredded like peeling an apple or an orange. Shape establishes identity but now the rind threatens to unravel and become a floating strand without identity.


Escher's fantasy Other World challenges the imagination and our sense of the structure of reality. Nothing could be more powerful in exploring the relativity of existence.