5 ms·

I've always felt that people didn't really regard Escher as an artist because his works are too straight forward. He manages to take his thoughts on infinity, b

I've always felt that people didn't really regard Escher as an artist because his works are too straight forward. He manages to take his thoughts on infinity, beginning and end, dimensions and other philosophical and mathematical concepts and put them into drawings in a very clear way. To me, this feels like incredible talent. But perhaps the artist world balks at such straight forwardness. Things need to be more abstract for them; more room for imagination about the work itself, rather than its subject. Take his work "Hand with Reflecting Sphere". To most people it is a very well executed drawing, but not much more. But it is much more. The reflection in the sphere is infinite. It encompasses the entire room; the entire world even. A two-dimensional drawing of an entire room projected onto a tiny surface. Those properties recur in his "Circle Limit III" piece. I'm not sure I would regard him as an artist. Perhaps he's more a philosopher that chose drawings to express his thoughts rather than writing. Regardless of which label we put on him, his works are fascinating to me in an almost Zen-like way.

MichaelCrawford 11y ago
My ex-wife Bonita Hatcher is an abstract video artist; that is, she doesn't make TV shows, she makes videos that often don't make a whole lot of sense to anyone. What you describe is "Didactic Art" that is, art whose message is plainly apparent. My take is that Didactic Art is in fact quite important, it serves society in many profoundly important ways. That Napoleon was eventually defeated was the result - in part - of a painting that depicted a giant, rather inattentive, absent-minded giant eating a human corpse like a candy bar. However, the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design is heavily into what Bonita calls "Art with a Capital 'A'". More or less, that's art that only other artists understand, as well as art historians. I learned a great deal about art history while she studied there, and attended a few lectures, spent time in its small but excellent library; again there are many important reasons why we have Art with a Capital "A". Escher was reviled by the other artists of his day because they regarded his work as revoltingly ugly. Consider that at the time we had stuff like Bauhaus and Art Deco. I at one time had the email escher@apple.com Hilarity ensued because everyone thought I was Christopher Escher, Apple's chief public spokesman. In reality I was hired as a contract script monkey for MacTCP, but I worked my way up by debugging its broken test tool strm_echo.
- duncanawoods 11y ago
  That Napoleon was eventually defeated was the result - in part - of a painting that depicted a giant, rather inattentive, absent-minded giant eating a human corpse like a candy bar. If you are referring to Goya's "Saturn Devouring His Son" then I don't think it was even painted before Napoleon's defeat. In any case, suggesting Napoleon's defeat was "the result" of a painting is hyperbole to the point of absurdity. There are examples of art having significant impact in the world but this is not one.
  - notauser 11y ago
    If you are interested in art and Napoleon (especially satirical prints and their effect on the politics and war of that time) then the British Museum has a temporary exhibition on "Bonaparte and the British" showing many cartoons from the period. http://www.britishmuseum.org/whats_on/exhibitions/bonaparte_and_the_british.aspx http://www.britishmuseum.org/whats_on/exhibitions/bonaparte_...
- artpolice 11y ago
  > Escher was reviled by the other artists of his day because they regarded his work as revoltingly ugly. I think this is still true, or at least aesthetic objections remain the principal rationalizations for deprecating Escher that I hear from the artists in my life. My wife and I live in The Hague. She's an illustrator and photographer from a family of artists: her mother, a painter and now an art therapist; her sister also an art therapist; her father, an abstract painter. (Not as hobbies, or idle trustafarian pursuits, these are their real livelihoods.) When her family comes to visit, "going to see the Escher museum" is a recurring joke, as in "ha ha, never going to do that." Whenever I ask why, the mumbled complaint is usually "it's ugly and boring." Really, 'reviled' remains the right word. I think it's snobbery, to a great and unacknowledged degree - the visual art equivalent of "genre fiction" in the literary world. The problem I have with lumping Escher with hack painters of cowboys and motorcycles, or airbrushers of vans as "unserious art" is that it ignores his innovations in subject, form, and style and mastery of technique. But then, the "serious" art world of the west is very much a class construct of which snobbery is essential part.
jules 11y ago
Abstract art has a high degree of pretentiousness and fakeness to it. What makes Escher's art attractive is that it is purely what it is. It's impressive on its own, and there is no need to elevate it into something that it is not.
beloch 11y ago
To me, one of the hallmarks of great artists is that their work is distinct and recognizable. Escher's work is unmistakable for that of anyone else, both because of content and technique. Even works that don't feature the impossible geometry or tessellations he became famous for are unmistakably his due to their execution. Most artists who dare to be so utterly unique have little chance of achieving commercial success, but Escher remains one of the most popular artists of the twentieth century. His work is iconic. Escher's unpopularity in high art circles is likely due to this improbable combination of uniqueness and popularity. Few artists dare to be as different as Escher was, and those who try usually wind up as failures. In this sense, Escher is a subject of ultimate jealousy for any "serious" artist while simultaneously being one of contempt for his popularity. Escher is a great artist. I don't care what some people say. They're wrong. They'd likely have the same view of Picasso if he had held himself more aloof.
- tbabb 11y ago
  Indeed. It doesn't matter at all what the "art world" thinks; Escher's images have made an indelible mark on culture, and that makes him a great artist.

MichaelCrawford 11y ago

My ex-wife Bonita Hatcher is an abstract video artist; that is, she doesn't make TV shows, she makes videos that often don't make a whole lot of sense to anyone. What you describe is "Didactic Art" that is, art whose message is plainly apparent. My take is that Didactic Art is in fact quite important, it serves society in many profoundly important ways. That Napoleon was eventually defeated was the result - in part - of a painting that depicted a giant, rather inattentive, absent-minded giant eating a human corpse like a candy bar. However, the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design is heavily into what Bonita calls "Art with a Capital 'A'". More or less, that's art that only other artists understand, as well as art historians. I learned a great deal about art history while she studied there, and attended a few lectures, spent time in its small but excellent library; again there are many important reasons why we have Art with a Capital "A". Escher was reviled by the other artists of his day because they regarded his work as revoltingly ugly. Consider that at the time we had stuff like Bauhaus and Art Deco. I at one time had the email escher@apple.com Hilarity ensued because everyone thought I was Christopher Escher, Apple's chief public spokesman. In reality I was hired as a contract script monkey for MacTCP, but I worked my way up by debugging its broken test tool strm_echo.

duncanawoods 11y ago
That Napoleon was eventually defeated was the result - in part - of a painting that depicted a giant, rather inattentive, absent-minded giant eating a human corpse like a candy bar. If you are referring to Goya's "Saturn Devouring His Son" then I don't think it was even painted before Napoleon's defeat. In any case, suggesting Napoleon's defeat was "the result" of a painting is hyperbole to the point of absurdity. There are examples of art having significant impact in the world but this is not one.
- notauser 11y ago
  If you are interested in art and Napoleon (especially satirical prints and their effect on the politics and war of that time) then the British Museum has a temporary exhibition on "Bonaparte and the British" showing many cartoons from the period. http://www.britishmuseum.org/whats_on/exhibitions/bonaparte_and_the_british.aspx http://www.britishmuseum.org/whats_on/exhibitions/bonaparte_...
artpolice 11y ago
> Escher was reviled by the other artists of his day because they regarded his work as revoltingly ugly. I think this is still true, or at least aesthetic objections remain the principal rationalizations for deprecating Escher that I hear from the artists in my life. My wife and I live in The Hague. She's an illustrator and photographer from a family of artists: her mother, a painter and now an art therapist; her sister also an art therapist; her father, an abstract painter. (Not as hobbies, or idle trustafarian pursuits, these are their real livelihoods.) When her family comes to visit, "going to see the Escher museum" is a recurring joke, as in "ha ha, never going to do that." Whenever I ask why, the mumbled complaint is usually "it's ugly and boring." Really, 'reviled' remains the right word. I think it's snobbery, to a great and unacknowledged degree - the visual art equivalent of "genre fiction" in the literary world. The problem I have with lumping Escher with hack painters of cowboys and motorcycles, or airbrushers of vans as "unserious art" is that it ignores his innovations in subject, form, and style and mastery of technique. But then, the "serious" art world of the west is very much a class construct of which snobbery is essential part.

jules 11y ago

Abstract art has a high degree of pretentiousness and fakeness to it. What makes Escher's art attractive is that it is purely what it is. It's impressive on its own, and there is no need to elevate it into something that it is not.

beloch 11y ago

To me, one of the hallmarks of great artists is that their work is distinct and recognizable. Escher's work is unmistakable for that of anyone else, both because of content and technique. Even works that don't feature the impossible geometry or tessellations he became famous for are unmistakably his due to their execution. Most artists who dare to be so utterly unique have little chance of achieving commercial success, but Escher remains one of the most popular artists of the twentieth century. His work is iconic. Escher's unpopularity in high art circles is likely due to this improbable combination of uniqueness and popularity. Few artists dare to be as different as Escher was, and those who try usually wind up as failures. In this sense, Escher is a subject of ultimate jealousy for any "serious" artist while simultaneously being one of contempt for his popularity. Escher is a great artist. I don't care what some people say. They're wrong. They'd likely have the same view of Picasso if he had held himself more aloof.

tbabb 11y ago
Indeed. It doesn't matter at all what the "art world" thinks; Escher's images have made an indelible mark on culture, and that makes him a great artist.