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- Regarding Others' Interpretations:
- "A woman once rang me up and said, 'Mr. Escher, I am absolutely crazy about your
work. In your print -Reptiles- you have given such a striking illustration of
reincarnation.' I replied, 'Madam, if that's the way you see it, so be it.'"
- Regarding His Work:
- "I try in my prints to testify that we live in a beautiful and orderly world,
not in a chaos without norms, even though that is how it sometimes appears. My subjects
are also often playful: I cannot refrain from demonstrating the nonsensicalness of some of
what we take to be irrefutable certainties. It is, for example, a pleasure to deliberately
mix together objects of two and three dimensions, surface and spatial relationships, and
to make fun of gravity."
- Regarding Art:
- "To tell you the truth, I am rather perplexed by the concept of 'art'. What one
person considers to be 'art' is often not 'art' to another. 'Beautiful' and 'ugly' are
old-fashioned concepts that are seldom applied these days; perhaps justifiably, who knows?
Something repulsive, which gives you a moral hangover, and hurts your ears or eyes, may
well be art. Only 'kitsch' is not art - we're all agreed about that. Indeed, but what is
'kitsch'? If only I knew!"
- Regarding Dividing The Plane: (symmetry and tessellations)
- "I think I have never yet done any work with the aim of symbolizing a particular
idea, but the fact that a symbol is sometimes discovered or remarked upon is valuable for
me because it makes it easier to accept the inexplicable nature of my hobbies, which
constantly preoccupy me."
"The regular division of the plane into
congruent figures evoking an association in the observer with a familiar natural object is
one of these hobbies or problems...I have embarked on this geometric problem again and
again over the years, trying to throw light on different aspects each time. I cannot
imagine what my life would be like if this problem had never occured to me; one might say
that I am head over heels in love with it, and I still don't know why."
All quotes in this collection are attributed to M.C. Escher unless otherwise noted.
More quotes and intersesting information can be found in our Newsletter Archive.
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