Virtual Worlds: MC Escher and Paradox September 5, 2009

Printmaker Maurits Cornelis Escher (Dutch, 1898-1972) created visual puzzles that astonish with their mathematical rigor and their patent absurdity. This exhibition traces the development of the artist's work from his early stylized depictions of landscape and architecture to his later use of repeated geometric patterns, stimulated by his visit in 1936 to the Alhambra in Granada, Spain. There he discovered Moorish decorative tiles with their purely abstract designs. By adding the suggestion of human or animal forms to such logical patterns, Escher began creating imaginary images in which one form morphs into another. Exploiting the potential for visual paradox of reversals of figure and ground, manipulations of perspective, and shifts between spatial illusion and the flatness of the picture surface, he created virtual worlds.