Monday Morning Art #10 - Maurits C. Escher

Born at the end of one of the most dramatic centuries in art history, Maurits (aka Mauk) Escher was a contemporary of Salvador Dali and René Magritte, and there are certainly some similarities to those artists in some of his early works. No doubt they were cross-influenced at numerous stages in their careers.

Escher has difficulty in academics and focuses on illustration. In the beginning his work with centres around portraits, figures and landscapes. And a few cats.  But his chosen media drives his style and fosters a later interest in patterns and line that is quite profound. The stark blacks and whites lead him to an early exploration of shapes. 

This early piece is called "Twon Tree" (1919) takes a simple landscape, but departs from realism and turns tree branches into a swirling, surrealist pattern that explores the geometric. 





But for another two and a half decades, Escher's work is well grounded in reality.  His landscapes and buildings are sharpy captured, with strong lighting and perspective.

He does a number of works around Italy, from the Amalfi coast, to rural mountain villages in Tuscany.  The stark lights-and-darks of the tower faces in "San Gimignano" (1923), capture the village just south of Florence, are are captivating with their drama 





This untitled village (1930) nestled in the mountains is a striking asymmetric composition.

There is an underlying hint of magical realism gained from unusual angles and somewhat organic, amorphous shapes.

A pivotal piece for me is this one called "The Bridge" from 1930. Presumably this is on the Amalfi coast, where he was painting many scenes at the time.  The combination of three things appears to be important:

• The unusual angle
• the complexity of the blocks of houses, and 
• the geometry of the staired-bridge, and the adjacent stairs on the buildings. 

This surely leads him towards some of his best-known works of impossible staircases,  like the House of Stairs in 1951 and the famous "Relativity Lattice" (1953), shown here.








 Across his career, Escher also likes to explore the impact of unusual optical effects on an image. He does several self portraits based on looking at himself in a spherical lens.  Here is a rough montage of five of those portraits.  Beginning in the top left, the years of creation are: 1921, 1934, 1935, 1946 and 1950. 

 
By the time we're into the late 1940s and '50s, Escher's work is almost completely exploration of geometric patterns, eye-twisting illusions and fascinating negative/positive space interconnections. Flying Fish,  Lizards or Butterflies for example - all fitting together perfectly in a pattern. 

To wrap up, I thought this very Internet-friendly image of a cat, from Escher's early years (1919) captures a bit of his earliest thinking about negative and positive space.  This appears to be a woodcut, leaving the artist the challenge of representing fuzzy fur with only lines. The result is very successful indeed.