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Two years ago, a very popular game "Monument Valley", I believe that there are many witty friends who have passed it, and they are still unfinished.
The game has a stunning aesthetic design, it skillfully places the contradictory space in a two-dimensional world, and presents it in the form of a game, allowing the player to immerse themselves in this staggered space of contradiction while solving the puzzle.
● Monument Valley game scenes
We all understand that the real world is not the five-dimensional space in the movie "Interstellar", but we can grasp the expressive characteristics of the three-dimensional image in the two-dimensional plane and use the visual misleading difference to create a non-existent contradictory space.
For example, when we look at a distant object and a near object fused into a plane, we often have a visual sense of staggering, which is visual misleading. This sense of staggering is also often used in reality, as evidenced by the Penrose Triangle, which has been called "the impossible in its purest form."
● The Penrose Triangle in Monument Valley
And all of this has a great relationship with a person. He is difficult to classify, even art history has deliberately forgotten it, he has influenced many scientists, musicians, directors... Of course, this also includes the game mentioned above called Monument Valley.
He was the Dutch artist Maurits Cornelis Escher.
In the stereotype, the artist must be the kind of person with long hair and a small taste, while the mathematician is the kind of person who is dull and cold, but the above-mentioned Escher completely breaks everyone's cognition of common sense - the mathematical system of art, forming Escher's unique artistic characteristics.
Maurits Cornelis Escher
At the end of the 19th century, Escher was born into an ordinary family in the Netherlands. His father was a civil engineer, and under the influence of his father, Escher's spatial thinking ability had a good foundation from an early age.
He is very good at the free change of two-dimensional space and three-dimensional space, and can give geometric shapes unlimited possibilities. As a result, Escher, who called himself a "graphic artist", completed his first print "Father G.A. Escher" in middle school.
● Woodcut of Father G.A. Escher, 1916
After graduating from secondary school, Escher went to the Haarlem School of Architecture and Decorative Arts to study architecture. His father was in the construction industry, and it was reasonable to say that he should also have a son from his father's business. But geeks were always different, and Escher's main subject was always hung, but he was partial to painting and design—the knowledge of physics and mathematics did not train him to become an architect, and the seeds of art began to take root.
After graduating from university, Escher began traveling in Europe, and he was particularly impressed by the Alhambra Castle in Granada, Spain. This 14th-century Moorish castle building is a style of flat mosaics that fascinate him.
During his lifetime, he created a total of 137 flat mosaics, of which the print "Tower of Babel" was created during his stay in Europe. The motifs are often filled with intricate Central Asian decorative styles, and they are still a source of inspiration for decorators today.
● Woodcut of The Tower of Babel, 1928
In the eyes of ordinary people, art is beautiful and emotional, but in his eyes, art is a mysterious beauty between science and philosophy. He was often obsessed with paradoxes and the "impossible.". Once the traditional perspective principles in graphic design are broken, the space of contradiction is also born.
For example, his classic "Observation Building", everyone looks carefully, the floor of the observation floor below is vertical, but the upper floor is a horizontal, and the stone columns supporting the floor are also staggered. What's even more interesting is that the boy sitting on the bench in the lower left corner has a "toy" in his hand a cube — an "impossible" cube.
This reminds me that the statement "existence is reasonable" is itself paradoxical. The "truth" remains, because the "truth" of creation is "the use of illusions," and Escher has done it.
● Lithograph of "Observation Building", 1958
"Rising and Falling" is also one of Escher's representative works, and at first glance, the picture is harmonious and quiet.
But when you look closely, you will find that a group of missionaries on the roof of the building went up the stairs, turned 4 corners and then returned to the same place. Another group of missionaries descended the stairs, turned 4 corners, and returned to their original places.
Who rises? Who drops? It's hard to say, because they all end up spinning on similar planes. Ken Wong, producer of Monument Valley, has said he was inspired by the work.
● Lithographs of "Rising and Falling", 1960
By 1961, Escher's best-known work, The Waterfall, was born. As in his previous works, he moves a misstructured building onto paper, but the treatment of the subject and background is noticeably more breathtaking.
The combination of the bokeh horizontal terrace background and the vertical line of the building not only does not make the picture look too complicated, but achieves a balance, and the contrast between the direction of the line and the color scale allows the viewer to focus on observing the building itself.
It's hard to imagine how Escher in the 1960s could have done this work without relying on electronic drawing devices and relying solely on imagination.
● Lithograph of Waterfall, 1961
Escher died in 1972 at the age of 73.
He did not change the way of painting in the history of artistic development like Manet's Impressionism, nor did he, like Leonardo da Vinci, because his exquisite skills became the object of lifelong admiration of posterity, and he did not bring the meaning of art to the other extreme like Duchamp.
Because of this, many people feel that Escher's artistic value is insignificant.
● Escher, who is working
But is that really the answer? Apparently not.
Escher's charm is unique, and no other painter can attract the attention of so many non-art people with his quirky and unique works.
When Monument Stock once topped the list, when Nolan's Inception created a series of psychedelic dreams, when the extradimensional style scenes in Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone kept appearing... Who would have thought that behind all this was a masterpiece that a dedicated Dutch artist had researched for decades in his home during World War II.
● Self-Portrait in a Spherical Mirror, lithograph, 1935
Escher was obsessed with spheres, as can be seen in his self-portrait in the crystal balls. This mysterious crystal ball seems to give Escher not only strange powers, but also a wonderful metaphor for the relationship between Escher's life and his works.
Just as his life's work reflects the same theme—the world and its mirror images, all related to reflection, perspective, refraction, projection—Escher is like a child with a magic mirror in his hand, constructing a new world of magic of his own.
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