Here we tap into dates from M.C. Eschers life and work, jumping through time but always in the now. All year round you can enjoy background stories, anecdotes and trivia about this fascinating artist.
Bearing the same title as was used for the retrospective exhibition in 1968, the book De werelden van M.C. Escher (The Worlds of M.C. Escher) was launched in the Gemeentemuseum in The Hague on 23 November 1971. On 10 December, the artist himself received the first copy in the Rosa Spier Huis (retirement home for Dutch artists) in Laren. Prior to this it was clear that the book would be a huge success. The Committee for the Collective Propaganda of the Dutch book (CPNB) had proclaimed it the ‘Book of the Month’. Publisher Meulenhoff initially aimed at 40,000 copies, but soon increased the circulation to 50,000. Yet even this revised quantity had already been sold by the time the book was available in the bookstore. Once again the number of copies was increased, this time to 75,000, but within a month these were all sold too. For an introductory price of ƒ12.50, buyers received a book containing five introductions, a bibliography, an overview of Escher’s main exhibitions and lectures, and 270 captioned images (including eight in colour). A bargain.
On 4 December 1988 the graphic designer Gerd Arntz passed away. He was one of Escher’s best friends. With his distinctive style as a graphic artist, Arntz was an outsider among his colleagues. Just as Escher was. Both ‘outsiders’ appreciated each other’s work. The two corresponded for years, trading experiences and ideas and commenting on each other’s work. They also met at their respective homes and Arntz continued to visit Escher in the ‘Rosa Spier Huis’ (retirement home for Dutch artists), where Escher died in 1972.
On November 24, 1960, the writer’s workshop Oulipo was founded. It stands for ‘Ouvroir de Litterature Potentielle‘ or the ‘Workplace for Possible Literature‘. It is a loosely formed group of French-speaking writers and mathematicians who produce literary works that are subject to certain conditions or restrictions. The use of this type of restriction was not new (writers like Edgar Allan Poe, Lewis Carroll, James Joyce, Ferdinand de Saussure and Gertrude Stein already worked with it), but it is the first time that it has been done in an organized manner.
Escher was crazy about the jagged and vertical landscapes he encountered in Abruzzo and Calabria, on the Amalfi coast, on Sicily and on the French island of Corsica. He traversed these areas in a variety of ways for many years. Armed with his sketchpad and wearing knickerbockers, coarse argyle socks and sturdy walking shoes, he climbed the Corsican peaks, descended to the coastline of Amalfi, walked through the rugged mountains in Abruzzo and Calabria and braved the heat of Sicily. But there was one place where he kept returning to: Atrani.
From 14 November to 14 December 1950 Escher had an exhibition in the Amsterdam gallery Le Canard. He was exhibiting there along with his fellow graphic artist Harry van Kruiningen. The invitation card was adorned with a vignette featuring little devils, a wood engraving that Escher had produced specially for the exhibition. He displayed graphic work and a hand-woven tapestry there, as the card also shows.
Last week I wrote that Escher hasn't been positively regarded by art critics for years. But in the end he himself was his greatest critic. There are certainly exceptions, but often he was dissatisfied with his latest creation. This varied from ‘this is just not good enough’ and ‘there should be more to it than this’ to ‘this really is a total failure.’ At the end of October 1955 he was again dissatisfied with his work.
Nowadays M.C. Escher may be very popular with both the general public and art critics, but this was certainly not always the case. He has been ignored for years by many art lovers and critics. His work was dismissed as being decorative and was at most technically well made. Contentwise he had nothing to report. This opinion is already reflected in the earliest reviews of the twenties and kept returning in the decades that followed.
On 20 October 1922, Escher creates a drawing that—in retrospect—would have a major impact on his life. He made his first voyage by freighter that autumn, from Amsterdam to the Spanish port city of Málaga. The ship also moored in Alicante and Taragona, after which Escher traveled by train to Barcelona, Madrid, Avila and Toledo. In each city he stayed for a few days to take in the setting properly. On 17 October, after a long and very slow train journey from Toledo, he arrived in Granada. There he visited the beautiful Alhambra. This 14th-century castle was once built as an aristocratic and administrative centre for the last Moorish regime in Spain.
From 2 October 2018 to 13 January 2019, Escher in The Palace will be exhibiting two special woodblocks that Escher cut in May 1957 and the book in which the accompanying prints were published. The blocks and the book stem from the collection of Museum Meermanno in The Hague. Escher in The Palace is proud to be able to exhibit them and we are therefore very grateful to Museum Meermanno for this loan.
As of today Leonardo da Vinci can be seen in the Teylers museum in Haarlem. It is the first major overview ever of original artworks by Renaissance artist Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) in the Netherlands. Teylers shows 33 drawings of the master and as many works of contemporaries. Da Vinci was not only able to draw and paint beautifully, he is also world famous for his inventions of flying machines and military artillery. He did not see art and science as separate ‘worlds’. For him they had everything to do with each other. This is where Da Vinci and Escher find each other. Both are first and foremost excellent observers. They look at the world with a logical, orderly view and know how to get those observations and the thoughts they derive from them on paper. They both did this with their left hand. Both are also part of popular culture through one or a few works (think of the Mona Lisa and the Vitruvian man and Relativity and Day and Night), but it is questionable if people know who the makers are.