M. C. Escher quotes - page 2

M. C. Escher was a Dutch graphic artist, famous for his mathematically inspired artworks featuring impossible constructions and optical illusions. His intricate designs have fascinated viewers and influenced art, architecture, and mathematics alike. He is celebrated for seamlessly blending art and mathematics into visually captivating masterpieces. Here are 40 of his quotes:

Only those who attempt the absurd will achieve the impossible. I think it's in my basement... let me go upstairs and check.

M. C. Escher

Now, I should like to say something else to you about the connection with music, primarily that of Bach, i. e. the Fugue or, put more simply, the canon... It has a great deal in common with my own motifs, which I make turn on various axes too. Nowadays I have such a powerful sense of relationship, of affinity, that when I am listening to Bach I frequently get inspired and feel an overwhelming instinct for his insistent rhythm, a cadence seeking something of the infinite. In the Fugue everything is based on a single motif, often consisting of just a few notes. In my work, too, everything revolves around a single closed contour..

M. C. Escher

In mathematical quarters, the regular division of the plane has been considered theoretically... Does this mean that it is an exclusively mathematical question? In my opinion, it does not. [Mathematicians] have opened the gate leading to an extensive domain, but they have not entered this domain themselves. By their very nature they are more interested in the way in which the gate is opened than in the garden lying behind it.

M. C. Escher

It's pleasing to realize that quite a few people enjoy this sort of playfulness and that they are not afraid to look at the relative nature of rock-hard reality.

M. C. Escher

What I give form to in daylight is only one per cent of what I have seen in darkness.

M. C. Escher

It is human nature to want to exchange ideas, and I believe that, at bottom, every artist wants no more than to tell the world what he has to say. I have sometimes heard painters say that they paint 'for themselves': but I think they would soon have painted their fill if they lived on a desert island.

M. C. Escher

It may seem paradoxical to say that there are similarities between a poetical and a commercial mind, but it is a fact that both a poet and a businessman are constantly dealing with problems that are directly related to people and for which sensitivity is of prime importance.

M. C. Escher

This transitional group does not have a particular preference for thinking or feeling, but believes that one cannot do without either the one or the other. At any rate, it is unprejudiced enough to wish for a better understanding between the two parties... It is clear that feeling and understanding are not necessarily opposites but that they complement each other.

M. C. Escher

Are you sure that a floor cannot also be a ceiling? Are you absolutely certain that you go up when you walk up a staircase?

M. C. Escher

The result of the struggle between the thought and the ability to express it, between dream and reality, is seldom more than a compromise or an approximation.

M. C. Escher

By keenly confronting the enigmas that surround us, and by considering and analyzing the observations that I had made, I ended up in the domain of mathematics. Although I am absolutely without training in the exact sciences, I often seem to have more in common with mathematicians than with my fellow artists.

M. C. Escher

It is human nature to want to exchange ideas, and I believe that, at bottom, every artist wants no more than to tell the world what he has to say. I have sometimes heard painters say that they paint 'for themselves': but I think they would soon have painted their fill if they lived on a desert island. The primary purpose of all art forms, whether it's music, literature, or the visual arts, is to say something to the outside world; in other words, to make a personal thought, a striking idea, an inner emotion perceptible to other people's senses in such a way that there is no uncertainty about the maker's intentions.

M. C. Escher

As far as I know, there is no proof whatever of the existence of an objective reality apart from our senses, and I do not see why we should accept the outside world as such solely by virtue of our senses. These reality enthusiasts are possibly playing at hide-and-seek; at any rate they like to hide themselves, though they are not usually aware of it. They simply do it because they happen to have been born with a sense of reality, that is, with a great interest in so-called reality, and because man likes to forget himself.

M. C. Escher