Portal:M. C. Escher
Portal maintenance status: (October 2018)
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Introduction
Maurits Cornelis Escher (Dutch pronunciation: [ˈmʌurɪt͡s kɔrˈneːlɪs ˈɛʃər]; 17 June 1898 – 27 March 1972) was a Dutch graphic artist who made mathematically-inspired woodcuts, lithographs, and mezzotints. Despite wide popular interest, Escher was for long somewhat neglected in the art world; even in his native Netherlands; he was 70 before a retrospective exhibition was held. In the twenty-first century, he became more widely appreciated, with exhibitions across the world.
His work features mathematical objects and operations including impossible objects, explorations of infinity, reflection, symmetry, perspective, truncated and stellated polyhedra, hyperbolic geometry, and tessellations. Although Escher believed he had no mathematical ability, he interacted with the mathematicians George Pólya, Roger Penrose, Harold Coxeter and crystallographer Friedrich Haag, and conducted his own research into tessellation.
Selected general articles
- Dragon (Dutch: Draak) is a wood engraving print created by Dutch artist M. C. Escher in April 1952, depicting a folded paper dragon perched on a pile of crystals. It is part of a sequence of images by Escher depicting objects of ambiguous dimension, including also Three Spheres I, Doric Columns, Drawing Hands and Print Gallery.
Escher wrote "this dragon is an obstinate beast, and in spite of his two-dimensions he persists in assuming that he has three". Two slits in the paper from which the dragon is folded open up like kirigami, forming holes that make the dragon's two-dimensional nature apparent. His head and neck pokes through one slit, and the tail through the other, with the head biting the tail in the manner of the ouroboros. Read more... - Curl-up or Wentelteefje (original Dutch title) is a lithograph print by M. C. Escher, first printed in November 1951.
This is the only work by Escher consisting largely of text. The text, which is written in Dutch, describes an imaginary species called Pedalternorotandomovens centroculatus articulosus, also known as “wentelteefje” or “rolpens”. He says this creature came into existence because of the absence in nature of wheel shaped, living creatures with the ability to roll themselves forward. Read more... - Waterfall (Dutch: Waterval) is a lithograph by the Dutch artist M. C. Escher, first printed in October 1961. It shows a perpetual motion machine where water from the base of a waterfall appears to run downhill along the water path before reaching the top of the waterfall.
While most two-dimensional artists use relative proportions to create an illusion of depth, Escher here and elsewhere uses conflicting proportions to create a visual paradox. The watercourse supplying the waterfall (its aqueduct or leat) has the structure of two Penrose triangles. A Penrose triangle is an impossible object designed by Oscar Reutersvärd in 1934, and found independently by Roger Penrose in 1958. Read more... - Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid, also known as GEB, is a 1979 book by Douglas Hofstadter.
By exploring common themes in the lives and works of logician Kurt Gödel, artist M. C. Escher, and composer Johann Sebastian Bach, the book expounds concepts fundamental to mathematics, symmetry, and intelligence. Through illustration and analysis, the book discusses how, through self-reference and formal rules, systems can acquire meaning despite being made of "meaningless" elements. It also discusses what it means to communicate, how knowledge can be represented and stored, the methods and limitations of symbolic representation, and even the fundamental notion of "meaning" itself.
In response to confusion over the book's theme, Hofstadter emphasized that Gödel, Escher, Bach is not about the relationships of mathematics, art, and music—but rather about how cognition emerges from hidden neurological mechanisms. One point in the book presents an analogy about how individual neurons in the brain coordinate to create a unified sense of a coherent mind by comparing it to the social organization displayed in a colony of ants. Read more...
Berend George Escher (April 4, 1885 in Gorinchem – October 11, 1967 in Arnhem) was a Dutch geologist.
Escher had a broad interest, but his research was mainly on crystallography, mineralogy and volcanology. He was a pioneer in experimental geology. He was a half-brother of the artist M.C. Escher, and had some influence on his work due to his knowledge of crystallography. M.C. Escher created a woodcut ex libris for his brother Beer with a stylized image of a volcano around 1922 (Bool number 91). Read more...
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Selected images
Forerunner of Escher's curved perspectives, geometries, and reflections: Parmigianino's Self-portrait in a Convex Mirror, 1524
The Escher Museum in The Hague. The poster shows a detail from Day and Night, 1938
Escher's birth house, now part of the Princessehof Ceramics Museum, in Leeuwarden, Friesland, the Netherlands
Forerunner of Escher's fantastic endless stairs: Piranesi's Carceri Plate VII – The Drawbridge, 1745, reworked 1761
Forerunner of Escher's impossible perspectives: William Hogarth's Satire on False Perspective, 1753
Sculpture of a small stellated dodecahedron, as in Escher's 1952 work Gravitation (University of Twente)
Wall tableau of one of Escher's bird tessellations at the Princessehof Ceramics Museum in Leeuwarden
Moorish tessellations including this one at the Alhambra inspired Escher's work with tilings of the plane. He made sketches of this and other Alhambra patterns in 1936.
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