The enigmatic Dutch artist M.C. Escher is probably best-known for his perspective-distorting lithographs and engravings, in which logical but impossible connections allow water to flow uphill and objects to be at the same time inside and outside a building. I’ve always enjoyed those works.
But at a recent exhibition of a lifetime of his works, we got to see more aspects of his work, and how his fascination with geometric and mathematical aspects of art developed. The exhibition, in a recycled warehouse on Brooklyn’s waterfront, runs through February 3, 2019.
Although the geometry-defying drawings, and the tesselations in which patterns repeat and morph, filling entire spaces, are there, I was most drawn this time to some of his early works, and to two installations that let us interact with an Escher work.
These two images, made while Escher was still in his 20s, still show the precision and detail that remained a hallmark throughout his career.
Above, an interior at St Peter’s and below, a view between St Peters and the Sistine Chapel.
The wondrous corridor of columns also has no tricks, unless you count a mirror image. It was fun to place myself in the view…
Perhaps this is where it all started. Escher once wrote: “When I was a young boy, I lived in an eighteenth-century house in Amsterdam. In one of the main rooms there were ‘trompe l’oeil’ decorations above the doors. These works looked so three-dimensional that they could be mistaken for real marble reliefs, a trick, an illusion that always astonished me.”
Escher’s ‘Hand with Reflecting Ball’ was recreated as an interactive, allowing me to ‘step into the picture’ again.
And, can’t leave without a favorite: Drawing Hands.
