MC Escher (1898-1972) was a Dutch graphic artist who made prints with woodcuts and lithographs. His most famous works are at once whimsical and precise. He explored visual concepts of infinity, used optical illusions to demonstrate higher dimensionality, and is recognized widely for his use of tessellations (as below).

In art, tessellations are repetitive abstract patterns that do not overlap or leave gaps in between. Escher created tessellations out of recognizable symbols, instead of abstract patterns, to create motifs that conveyed a specific theme.

I recently bought a secondhand book of his work, called “MC Escher: The Graphic Work”. I often buy secondhand books of art to look at the pictures. Sometimes they are inspirational, and often useful reference material. Growing up, these books always felt out of reach, for they would be too expensive. As a result, I cherish collecting them now. My great discovery after browsing through the images was to find that all the words in it were also written by the artist, describing his pieces and their various inspirations. I find this an incredible opportunity to not only understand what made him create, but also the circumstances of his career at the moment of inspiration.

“I consider my work the most beautiful and also the ugliest.” - MC Escher, on the book’s dust jacket.

He does not elaborate on this quote. But I hope to be able to answer it by the end of this series. With this in mind, let’s look at the things that inspired Mauritz Cornelius Escher. He trained to be a print-maker, and spent an early part of his career devoted to the pursuit of technical mastery.

Anyone who applies himself to the practice of graphic technique may … hold, as his highest ideal, the complete mastery of his craft. There is tremendous satisfaction [in the] acquisition of artistic skill. [The artist] will even make his choice of subject subordinate to this desire to explore some particular facet of technique.

These words resonate with me. I have sometimes lost weeks and months at a time, in the pursuit of various technical skills. I remember one such frenzy when I discovered the work of Kim Jung Gi. His effortless style with an ink brush drove me crazy. I vowed to draw the same way, or at least with the same air of nonchalance.

The pursuit of technical mastery made me a better artist. Of course, there is no way to actually reach the horizon. But we try. Escher spent years doing traditional print-work featuring landscapes and scenery. But a change came upon him one day.

“Ideas came to my mind quite unrelated to graphic art …Suddenly the method by which the image was to be presented became less important than it used to be.”

Of course, this is not to say the pursuit is fruitless. In the introduction text, Escher admits to this -

“Not only had the craft become second nature to me, it had also become essential."

Escher found that his expertise in print-making would serve him well in sharing his work with a large number of people. But what made these scales fall from his eyes? Transformation needs stimulus. Evolution requires adversity. Escher’s great stimulus/adversity was benign at first glance - the change of scenery when he returned to Belgium and the Netherlands from Italy.

“I found the outward appearance of landscape and architecture less striking … I felt compelled to withdraw from the more or less direct and true-to-life illustrating of my surroundings.”

I love how he finds opportunity in this adverse situation. I also find his adversity very interesting because of how it mirrors my own life. My artistic journey began after moving to the USA from Delft (in the Netherlands). A big stimulus to SneakyArt was starting a practice of drawing from observation, in the substantially “less striking” American Midwestern landscape. It is interesting to think how the same situation that shackles one person can set another free. It suggests to me that there is no single-line journey to becoming an artist. Each of us find our own inspirations, and take our own decisions. It is most important then that we trust ourselves in this lonely journey.

The “less striking” landscape pushed Escher to find inspiration from within. He dived into his cache of inspirations and found new things to work with. In this way, he found something that profoundly altered the trajectory of his artistic career.

Escher,_Regular_Division_of_the_Plane_III.jpg

Referring to his series known as “Regular Division of the Plane”, the artist calls it

the richest source of inspiration that I have ever struck.

He is referring to the work of the Moors at the Alhambra in Spain. Moors is a word for the Muslims who ruled in southern Europe (particularly Spain) in the Middle Ages. The Islamic tessellations had remained in his mind after years had passed. Now, when he sought inspiration, they catalyzed something completely novel.

They decorated walls and floors… by placing congruent, multi-colored pieces of majolica together without leaving any spaces [in] between.

Escher would adopt this principle as well. But being a great artist, he would not simply copy. Dali remarked once that good artists copy, but great artists steal. This was to come true in Escher’s situation. Escher took from the Alhambra what he needed, and craft something totally unique.

What a pity it is that Islam did not permit them to make graven images.

Here, Escher borrows a style developed for abstract patterns and imbues it with recognizable “symbols” - such as swans, lizards, people, or fish. He uses these symbols to create his own motifs which refer to creation, the balance of nature, evolution, and other ideas. This determines the themes of Escher’s future work.

His “mental images” arise from a confluence of his artistic vision and his precise craftsmanship. The sources of his inspiration are now more natural, rather than man-made. He is seeking an ultimate truth, and happy to reproduce its many forms.

In the next edition of this series, I will explore what drew Escher to the concept of infinity and the many ways he tried to express it in the visual medium. Despite having no training in the sciences or math, he finds himself intrigued by new possibilities.

Escher & Inspiration (1/5)