

Escherization - fogus
http://www.cgl.uwaterloo.ca/~csk/projects/escherization/

======
frossie
People forget that much of Escher's work were prints done by woodblock - what
he would do is not draw on paper, but carve wood, which of course means
working in the "negative" of the image. Looking at the woodblocks is simply
mindblowing - a real mind hack.

They are not often on tour, so Escher fans in Europe should hop onto a cheap
easyJet flight to Greece to see this:

[http://www.artdaily.com/index.asp?int_sec=2&int_new=3219...](http://www.artdaily.com/index.asp?int_sec=2&int_new=32192)

I saw an earlier installment of that exhibition series and it was well worth a
trip.

[Edit: Looks like some woodblocks will be in the US early next year:
[http://www.pbpulse.com/arts-and-culture/art-
museums/2009/05/...](http://www.pbpulse.com/arts-and-culture/art-
museums/2009/05/20/the-boca-museums-new-season-elvis-escher/) ]

~~~
diiq
They exist in the US, just not on display.

I got the chance to examine the (US) National Gallery's collection of Escher
prints; they aren't on display, but stored in the library, and you can see
them on request. There are hundreds of prints, many of which are artist's
proofs, and have penciled notes in the margins. It was those that impressed me
more than anything else; as a printmaker, I hold his work in the highest
regard --- and to see the amount of work he had to go to in order to
accomplish the effects that he did did nothing to decrease my admiration.

It's worth looking at his straight forward woodcuts and lithographs, also, in
addition to his famous tessellations and spatial warps; they are the epitome
of good printmaking.

~~~
frossie
I believe one of the reason the prints are rarely on display is that the paper
he used was not of archival quality and has really suffered with the passage
of time. The woodblocks are simply very rare - some recycled by the artist
even IIRC to make more blocks.

~~~
diiq
Also, his _prints_ are simply rare. There are less than 500 images in his
entire body of work, as I recall. Only some of those used blocks (he also made
lithographs, mezzotints, aquatints...), and only some of those survive.

------
gjm11
See also <http://escherdroste.math.leidenuniv.nl/> for (what I find) a more
interesting kind of Escherization.

(The UWaterloo one is about taking an arbitrary shape and tweaking it to make
a plane tessellation, and some generalizations of that. The Leiden one is
about the sort of nonlinear self-containment found in (e.g.) Escher's "Print
Gallery".)

[EDITED to fix an error -- gjm]

