M.C. Escher: The Art Mathmatician Yeazan Hammad 10/14/2014

Transcription

1 M.C. Escher: The Art Mathmatician Yeazan Hammad 10/14/2014 Maurits cornelis Escher was a Dutch graphic artist who is known to have gotten his inspirations for his works from mathematics lived from June 17, 1898 to the 27th of March, He was born in Leeuwarden, Netherlands, in a house that is now a part of the city museum of ceramics in Leeuwarden Netherlands, the Princessehof Ceramics Museum. His father was a civil engineer, George Arnold Escher. During his early life, Escher was a sickly child who had been placed in a special school when he was seven. Though he excelled in drawing, due to the fact that his illness may have affected his academic life his grades were poor and he had failed the second grade. Though this did not discourage him for he took carpentry and piano lessons until he was thirteen years old. In the year of 1919, at Haarlem, a city in the Netherlands, Escher enrolled in the Haarlem School of Architecture and Decorative Arts. He originally attended to study architecture, but that only lasted briefly due to failing multiple subjects, partly due to an aggressive skin infection. Instead of architecture, Escher decided to switch to decorative arts. He studied under a man who he stayed friends with for years, Samuel Jessurun de Mesquita. Samuel was a Jewish graphic artist who was active in the years prior to World War 2. Unfortunately he and his family were caught in1944 by the Nazi regime and they were sentenced to the gas chambers days after arrival to Auschwitz. In 1922, after gaining the experience Escher needed in drawing and making woodcuts, he left the school was a very important year of Eschers life, he traveled all through Spain and Italy. Throughout his travels he saw many sites of art that created a huge influence on Eschers work. One of the most important of them all was the intricate designs at Alhambra, a fourteenth century Moorish Castle in Granada, Italy, which had decorative designs based on geometrical symmetries. It featured repetitive interlocking patterns sculpted into the ceilings and walls. After his visit to Alhambra, Escher kept coming back to Italy regularly to Italy for the following years until was the year Escher met and married his wife, Jetta Umiker. They settled in Rome where they had children. Due to the political climate in Italy under Mussolini in 1935, Escher had lost interest in politics due to not being able to find a way to involve himself 1

2 with any ideals other than the expressions of his own concepts. Escher was considering leaving Italy, but what was the defining point of the decision was when his son, George, at age nine was forced to wear an Italian Fascist uniform at school, Ballila. The family moved to Switzerland and remained there for two years. In the year of 1937, the family moved again due to Escher being unhappy of the lack of landscapes that had inspired him in Italy. They moved to Uccle, which is a suburb of Brussels, Belgium. On January 1941, due to World War 2, the family was forced to move once again to Baarn, Netherlands, where Escher stayed until he was seventy years old. Eschers most well-known and better works art where created in the period he was in the Netherlands. He kept working throughout the years and only stopped for a period in 1962 due to him undergoing surgery was the year Escher finally retired and moved to a retirement home that included his own studio at Rosa Spier Huis in Laren. He died two years later at the age of 73. Eschers did not have any mathematical training, but was highly influenced by because he had a strong understanding of mathematics visually and intuitively. Almost all of Eschers works were influenced by multiple types of mathematics. His first influential piece of mathematics started with a paper his brother sent him created by George Plya on plane symmetry groups. In 1941, in a sketchbook, Escher summarized what he found out about mathematics in his findings in a sketchbook, Regular division of the plane with asymmetric congruent polygons, this paper is what made him to be considered a research mathematician. In his workings Escher wrote about the studies of color based division, and developed his own system of organizing and categorizing combinations of symmetrical properties, shapes and color. This can be seen demonstrated by Eschers work of art Sky and Water. 2

3 1956 was the year Escher delved into the concept of representing infinity on a 2D plane. This idea was influenced by discussions with Canadian mathematician Coxeter which brought up Eschers interest in hyperbolic tessellations, which are tilings of the hyperbolic plane. This understanding of hyperbolic tessellations gave birth to Eschers work of art, Circle Limit IIV. Escher even went as far as learning about topology from mathematician, Sir Roger Penrose. With what he learned from Penrose Escher created masterpieces like Waterfall and Up and Down. 3

4 Eschers main idea that he wanted from mathematics was the exploration of making art representing impossible objects, which are a type of optical illusion that is a two-dimensional figure that creates a subconsciously interpretation of a figure representing a three-dimensional object. This sort of artwork was very popular with mathematicians who recognize the influence 4

5 of the use of polyhedra and geometric distortions in Eschers works. One famous example of Eschers work on impossible figures would be his art piece, Relativity and Still Life and Street. 5

6 Later in his life Escher had become a lecturer at multiple organizations and even was scheduled to come to North America. Unfortunately this was canceled due to illness. Though he could not do any more lectures, Escher did publish about his illustrations and texts that he would have discussed in his lectures in his book, Escher on Escher marked the last art piece by Escher, which illustrated a representation of infinity through snakes winding through a pattern that fades into infinity toward the center and edges of the circle called Snakes. 6

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