Escher On Escher

Rating:
Summary: Not as interesting as one would expect
Review: I feel that this book seems, at first glance, to be much better than it really is. That is, when one picks up the book for the first time in a book store and flips through the pages, one gets the impression that it will actually be interesting to read, and will help in understanding Escher's genius. But really, the works themselves are the only things this book offers, the text is basically useless, shallow and uninteresting.

Rating:
Summary: Escher in his own words
Review: Maurits Escher, as an artist, needs no introduction. As a writer, however, he is not nearly well known enough. This short book collects some of his early writings from rather obscure journals, and presents a lecture that was never actually given.

Escher is well known for his precise renderings, and we are blessed with writing in the same precise style. He wrote out the script for his lecture in full, before it was to be given. That means that, when a medical emergency forced its cancellation, the lecture was preserved in its entirety. Like his geometric woodcuts and his precise lithographs, the calm of the text belies the passion that lay behind it. Escher spent decades in poverty before his well-earned fame, and pursued visions for which he had no good words and certainly no companions. That same drive was what pushed his skill as a woodblock artist down to the limits of his hands and his materials, below the limit of his unaided eye.

Although not trained in math or the hard sciences, he puts a human face on subtle mathematical concepts. The infinite and unbounded is a common idea, the finite and bounded is part of everyday life. These aren't his words, but he pursued the finite and unbounded, in tiled patterns on the surface of a sphere. He also sought out the infinite and bounded, and found it in the Cirle Limit pieces and other works.

This book is the only inexpensive and easily accesible source of Escher's own thoughts on his work. It's not a catalog of his work - most of the reproductions so small that they only suggest the piece depicted, or remind a viewer already familiar with the work. It's not a biography, although it has a few biographical details. People with the wrong expectations are sure to be disappointed in this.

I'm happy with it. It is a very enjoyable look at his cool manner of presentation. Like his Three Worlds litho, it presents a surface of meaning, but shows reflections of distant ideas and hints at his hidden depths.

//wiredweird

Rating:
Summary: Casual Fan Book
Review: This is a nice collection of Esher work for the casual fan not looking to spend a lot of dead presidents. THe book also has biographical information,ect

Rating:
Summary: Casual Fan Book
Review: This is a nice collection of Esher work for the casual fan not looking to spend a lot of dead presidents. THe book also has biographical information,ect