Looking back at the ‘Haagse Museumnacht’

Last Saturday Escher in The Palace dived into a strange episode of Eschers life. The central theme of this years ‘Haagse Museumnacht’ (a festive evening during which all museums are open and organise special events) was ‘Freak Like Me‘.

At the end of the sixties Eschers popularity grew from an unexpected angle. The hippy generation adopted the master of optical illusions for their own purposes. En masse they reprinted his work on posters and t-shirts. Preferably in blacklight, while this fitted the hallucinogenic effect of the popular drug LSD perfectly. The walls of countless dorm walls were covered with brightly coloured versions of Escher prints like Other World, Stars, Inside St. Peter’s, Double Planetoid, and Three Spheres. The distinguished Escher with his straight-lined principles suddenly became the King of psychedelics.

He had mixed feelings about this new status. He was unrelenting against the commercial use of his prints for album covers, but he was accommodating to students. What’s more, he could smile about it. In a letter to an American collector, with whom he exchanged thoughts about this phenomenon, he wrote:

 ‘Why should I be displeased if youngsters are happy with awfully coloured things on their walls. I feel more or less flattered and I am glad that they can afford them’

During the Museumnacht, Escher in The Palace demonstrated how the artist was perceived by the protest generation. With blacklight-editions of his work, a psychedelic green-screen where visitors could have their picture taken in front of bizarre variations on his prints, t-shirts with a hallucinogenic version of Stars on it, a trippy Escher-movie with fitting music in a benevolent relax-room, gigantic kaleidoscopes and lava lamps in the central staircase and soothing sessions with the spirograph.

Escher in The Palace thanks all visitors to the Haagse Museumnacht 2017!

All green-screen photos of visitors are on our Facebook page, in the album Museumnacht 2017.