## The Vertigo of MC Escher: A Master of Illusion
MC Escher’s work evokes a captivating sense of disorientation, a visual vertigo born from the manipulation of outlook and the exploration of mathematical concepts. His art, deeply influenced by diverse sources ranging from Hokusai prints to the music of Debussy,consistently challenges our perception of reality.
Escher’s artistic journey was enriched by travel, notably trips to Italy reminiscent of the 18th-century Grand Tour. These journeys yielded landscapes imbued with early explorations of illusion and anthropomorphization, foreshadowing the “double image” concept later articulated by Salvador Dali. By the 1930s, his creations began to feature recurring motifs of witches and cobwebs, reflecting a fascination with the bizarre, the fantastic, and the macabre.
A pivotal moment arrived in 1936 with a visit to Granada and the Alhambra. The palace’s decorations, rooted in mathematical formulas, spurred Escher’s research into tilings, or “tessellations.” he moved beyond simple geometric patterns,ingeniously weaving figures like dogs,riders,fish,and birds into seamlessly interlocking designs.
From 1937 onward, Escher’s work grew increasingly complex, yielding a series of masterpieces. His pieces often feature shapes that subtly shift as the eye moves across the surface. “Metamorphosis II” (1939-1940), a nearly 4-meter-long drawing, exemplifies this, transforming bees into dragonflies, fish, birds, a chessboard, and a fortified city. Escher masterfully plays with our visual understanding, questioning whether an object is concave or convex, making waterfalls flow on a flat plane, and animating architecture with playfully entangled structures. He even depicted two hands outlining each other, a visual portrayal of tautology, and created impossible loops of stairs where figures ascend and descend, always remaining upright. As Jean-Hubert Martin observes,”It makes the single vanishing point perspective say the opposite of what it was designed for.”
Escher’s engagement with the scientific community reached a high point at the International Congress of Mathematicians in Amsterdam in 1954. He captivated scientists with his work, drawing inspiration from mathematical models like the Möbius strip, the Necker cube, and the Penrose triangle, yet maintaining a fundamentally intuitive design process. He also utilized the spherical perspective favored by 15th-century Flemish artists, as seen in “Self-portrait with a spherical mirror,” and employed reflections to blur the lines between sky and earth. His ambitious “Gallery of prints” attempted to create a self-enclosing composition,a problem recently solved by mathematicians at the University of Leiden.
Escher’s legacy extends far beyond the art world.From the 1950s,his designs appeared on commissioned work,including chocolate boxes and greeting cards. During the hippie era, musicians featured his art on album covers, and even Mick Jagger sought his collaboration (unsuccessfully). His motifs have been embraced by fashion designers and comic book artists, and his work has been referenced in popular culture, including an episode of “The Simpsons.” Current exhibitions showcase optical experiments and video animations that illuminate his drawings,revealing his work as a “eulogy of doubt,” a sentiment that resonates powerfully today.
“MC Escher” is on view until March 1, at the Monnaie de Paris (Paris 6th). © DR.
