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Order and Chaos. Click to enlarge.
In an earlier post I commented on the ability of M.C. Escher to capture the infinity of time and space in his woodcuts, drawings, and lithographs.
Another common thread in many of Escher's works is the sense of order arising out of chaos - or is it chaos out of order? A master of graphic puns that simultaneously emphasize and blur the demarcation between figure and ground, Escher does seem to lean more in the direction of order out of chaos. In The Magic of M.C. Escher , a fabulous compendium of Escher's works that includes unpublished sketches from his workbooks and excerpts from his correspondence with family and colleagues, this direction is clear:
The consistency of the phenomena around us, order, regularity, cyclical repetitions and renewals, have started to speak to me more and more strongly all the time. The awareness of their presence brings me repose and gives me support. In my pictures I try to bear witness that we are living in a beautiful, ordered world, and not in a chaos without standards, as it sometimes seems.
For a very good intro to a broad selection of Escher's most famous works, visit the M.C. Escher - Life and Work on-line tour at the National Gallery of Art. From the program notes for the Order and Chaos lithograph pictured in this post:
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