Stories about Escher

Just imagine. You’re an artist, creating your own work with passion and dedication. You slave away, struggling to demonstrate your ideas. You long, pine for recognition. You get it. Finally, en masse. And then… Much of the appreciation comes from a public you have nothing in common with. That you don’t understand anything about. A public that loves and appreciates your work for very different reasons to what you had intended. In this edition in the series about Escher and music, we are focusing on tainted love affair between Escher and the hippies: the 1960s.

Summer! Time to enjoy the sun and to laze around on the beach. At Escher in The Palace we are full of summer cheer. During the holiday period we will be showing how Escher spent his holidays. For the first time ever photos of his beach holidays will be on display along with beach fashion from the start of the previous century.

‘I believe that no music moves me as much...’, Escher wrote of Bach’s compositions to a friend on his 22nd birthday. In the previous story I wrote about Escher’s love of music. The current issue will be looking specifically at his partiality for one particular composer: Johann Sebastian Bach.

'The organ grew considerably; the pipes stretched from the heavens to the earth, and the young man felt such a powerful wind that he rose from the stones and soared into the air, between the swaying columns.' This quote stems from a letter Escher wrote to his friend Jan in 1920. At this point he was 22 and was lodging in Haarlem.

Often, it is the highlights within an artist’s oeuvre that attract most attention. Which is logical, as they are representative of the artist at his very best, having found his style and surpassing his early work. But does this imply that his early work is unexciting? Quite the contrary. Escher’s early works exude something of the artist he will go on to become in due course.