Customer Reviews (1)

One never tires of Escher...
It's the first time I've done a review on a calendar;but this one on Escher's work begs for one.There is a bit of everything here.I particularly liked the "detail" ones where a part of one of his works is taken to stand alone.The quotes were also very good.
"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."(Mar 7)

"Order is repetition of units.Chaos is
multiplicity without rhythm."(Oct 24)

Any Escher fan will enjoy this calendar. ... Read more

Product Description
Maurits Cornelis Escher was a truly unique artist whose vision was quite unlike anyone else’s. To enter his world is to set foot into unknown and unsettling territory.

His extraordinary pictures of logic and perspective fool the braininto believing the impossible- that staircases can climb forever, thatfish can morph into birds, and that water can run uphill. Enter theworld of MC Escher in this truly unique collection of his work,encompassing over 70 full-color pictures ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

stark, gigantic, modern, you need a table to read this book
My appreciation of art has been so influenced by the power of photography to capture things as I see them that I fail to see the works of M. C. Escher as being very artistic.If art is supposed to show the power of human beings to capture the essence of objects as we see them, Escher seems to be trying to show us things we could never see, but that try to be art like cinnamon rolls that come from a refrigerated can of dough and icing might try to replace real cinnamon rolls in our lives.Of the eight small pictures shown around the weird building topped with stairs and a tiny tower on the cover of M C ESCHER by Sandra Forty published by TAJ BOOKS 2003, a square near the lower right corner looks like a swirling combination of reptiles cooked up from splotchy shapes as a pattern emerges from the 10 x 10 squares around the edges, the shape of which suggests a pan of something from the oven.

I was introduced to the work of M C Escher about 33 years ago, after I was an adult attempting to understand the ways in which highly educated people understand the world.Or, in the case of M C Escher, there seems to be real questions about what people are doing here at all.On the stairs at the top of the building on the cover, the outer 14 hooded walkers seem to be climbing, holding the outer railing in their left hands, while the 12 inner walkers pass them descending the stairs with their left hands on the inner railing.The inner courtyard does not appear to be square, because the front wall is so much longer than the back, but due to perspective, each step appears to be higher or lower than any other step.

Maurits Cornelis Escher lived from 1898 to 1972, about the span of life of my grandparents, and page 5, which contains that information, also shows "House of Stairs" (my favorite Escher design) in the center of that page, though a larger copy, Plate 40 on page 51, is the same picture at about 6 inches by 12 inches.There are only a few pages in this book that don't have pictures on them.At the top of the pages of text up to page 11, there is a thin strip reproducing a long mural called "Metamorphosis" that is mainly black and white with a little color where a sky full of flying birds transforms into a city by a waterfront with a little bridge to a castle sitting on a chessboard.Escher did a lot, he "left over 2,000 drawings and 448 lithographs, woodcuts, and engravings. . . .His legacy is carefully guarded by the M. C. Escher Foundation at Baarn, The Netherlands."(p. 5).It is not surprising that this book contains some pictures that I did not have before.In the case of Plate 47, "Plane Filling Motif With Fish and Bird," (p. 58) I quickly saw four fish with eyes like circles, but it took me awhile to see a bird in the center between them, with an eye that looked like the number "6" which first seemed to be a cartoonish swirl to depict motion in whatever the fish were swimming in.There is nothing realistic in that picture:it looks more like a ragged potholder than a photograph, but the page is so black it can't be anything but ink on a page, which is what it is.

Escher's work is not totally devoid of women.One in a white dress is walking into "Convex and Concave" in Plate 56 (p. 67).Plate 7 shows "Jetta (Escher's wife)" 1925 woodcut 49.2 x 27.8 cm, looking very proper, with a collar that extends from shoulder to shoulder, holding a flower in front of a dark outfit that shows nothing of her figure, with her eyes lowered so that she can only see the flower if she is seeing anything.Her hair is neatly parted, but a tiny curl is visible by one temple.The picture is so black and white, the impression is that only her face, the flower and her hand are white, while her collar, neck and aura are trying to reside somewhere in between the light and the mystery where the shadow of her nose meets the edge of her lips.People who have worked with wood and a gouge will be able to detect each cut in the wood, and the only thing which is stark about the picture is that his use of technique is so visible.

A famous design, Plate 51 "Gravity" 1952 Lithograph and watercolor (p. 62), shows orange, purple, green, yellow, red, blue creatures standing on star-shaped planes with a point over the back of each creature.One point is a bit off center, with the five points of the plane on which the yellow creature is standing close to the edges of the picture, though five more points offset in the background suggest that the shape continues around to the other side.The creatures are arranged so each is shown from a different angle, each facing in a unique direction, but each seems to reflect the same dull recognition:I Know, I know, i know, i . . . ... Read more

Product Description
The magic of M. C. Escher's (1898-1972) extraordinary eye puzzles endures, as this Spanish-language survey of his work shows. Not a surrealist but an architect of impossible worlds who presents the unthinkable as if it were a law of nature, Escher offers dimensional and perspectival illusions that bring viewers into confrontation with the limitations of their sensory perception. ... Read more

Product Description
Imaginary worlds, impossible stairways, paradoxical haliways, enigmatic patterns, and mind-boggling graphics are the trademarks of M.C. Escher's artwork. His two-dimensional drawings bring to life a fourth dimension where the surfaces of things come together like a Mobius strip. The profoundly original work of Escher has inspired countless artists, designers, and filmmakers and can be considered a genre in itself. This guide provides a mind-bending introduction to the great master's work. ... Read more

Product Description
Chapters: Fernando Torres. Source: Wikipedia. Pages: 36. Not illustrated. Free updates online. Purchase includes a free trial membership in the publisher's book club where you can select from more than a million books without charge. Excerpt: Maurits Cornelis Escher (17 June 1898 27 March 1972), usually referred to as M.C. Escher (English pronunciation: , Dutch: ), was a Dutch graphic artist. He is known for his often mathematically inspired woodcuts, lithographs, and mezzotints. These feature impossible constructions, explorations of infinity, architecture, and tessellations. Maurits Cornelis, nicknamed "Mauk", was born in Leeuwarden, The Netherlands. He was the youngest son of civil engineer George Arnold Escher and his second wife, Sara Gleichman. He was a sickly child, and was placed in a special school at the age of seven and failed the second grade. In 1903, the family moved to Arnhem where he took carpentry and piano lessons until he was thirteen years old. From 1903 until 1918 he attended primary school and secondary school. Though he excelled at drawing, his grades were generally poor. In 1919, Escher attended the Haarlem School of Architecture and Decorative Arts. He briefly studied architecture, but he failed a number of subjects (partly due to a persistent skin infection) and switched to decorative arts. Here he studied under Samuel Jessurun de Mesquita, with whom he would remain friends for years. In 1922 Escher left the school, having gained experience in drawing and making woodcuts. In 1922, an important year of his life, Escher traveled through Italy (Florence, San Gimignano, Volterra, Siena) and Spain (Madrid, Toledo, Granada). He was impressed by the Italian countryside and by the Alhambra, a fourteenth-century Moorish castle in Granada, Spain. He came back to Italy regularly in the following years. In Italy he met Jetta Umiker, whom he married in 1924. The young couple settled down in Rome and stayed there ...More: http://booksllc.net/?id=20127 ... Read more

Product Description
Chapters: M. C. Escher. Source: Wikipedia. Pages: 65. Not illustrated. Free updates online. Purchase includes a free trial membership in the publisher's book club where you can select from more than a million books without charge. Excerpt: Maurits Cornelis Escher (17 June 1898 27 March 1972), usually referred to as M.C. Escher (English pronunciation: , Dutch: ), was a Dutch graphic artist. He is known for his often mathematically inspired woodcuts, lithographs, and mezzotints. These feature impossible constructions, explorations of infinity, architecture, and tessellations. Maurits Cornelis, nicknamed "Mauk", was born in Leeuwarden, The Netherlands. He was the youngest son of civil engineer George Arnold Escher and his second wife, Sara Gleichman. He was a sickly child, and was placed in a special school at the age of seven and failed the second grade. In 1903, the family moved to Arnhem where he took carpentry and piano lessons until he was thirteen years old. From 1903 until 1918 he attended primary school and secondary school. Though he excelled at drawing, his grades were generally poor. In 1919, Escher attended the Haarlem School of Architecture and Decorative Arts. He briefly studied architecture, but he failed a number of subjects (partly due to a persistent skin infection) and switched to decorative arts. Here he studied under Samuel Jessurun de Mesquita, with whom he would remain friends for years. In 1922 Escher left the school, having gained experience in drawing and making woodcuts. In 1922, an important year of his life, Escher traveled through Italy (Florence, San Gimignano, Volterra, Siena) and Spain (Madrid, Toledo, Granada). He was impressed by the Italian countryside and by the Alhambra, a fourteenth-century Moorish castle in Granada, Spain. He came back to Italy regularly in the following years. In Italy he met Jetta Umiker, whom he married in 1924. The young couple settled down in Rome and stayed there unt...More: http://booksllc.net/?id=20127 ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

An adequate, if unspectacular, introductory overview of Escher's works
This book is essentially a printing of 184 of M.C. Escher's most well known pieces, combined with a 16 pg scholarly overview by J. L. Lochner.

I've always been a fan of Escher's art (as is true of many people with a somewhat scientific bent) - I enjoy the way he plays with the perceptions of the viewer ... with conflicting nuances of perspective, texture, color, outline, light, shadow, as well as with his studies of how to use the finite to evoke the infinite. In any case, this book was an opportunity to dive more deeply into the artist's varied works - not just his well know pieces, but also many of his lesser known ones.

The author's introduction is very capable and illuminating (if a bit short) - taking the reader on a journey across the artist's career (including both his pre 1937 period in which he focused mainly on the Italian and Spanish countryside; and his post 1937 period, in which he focused increasingly on studies in perspective, metamorphosis, and the infinite), and illuminating aspects that many viewers miss out on ... such as the artist's incredible talent for spatial precision and fine etchmanship (most of Escher's works are carved, rather than drawn - something that's easy to miss out on if you've only seen pictures of the works, rather than the originals themselves).

All in all, I found this book to be a very adequate, if unspectacular, introductory overview of Escher's works.

corrections:
Hardcover
Totals to 270 pages if count illustrations (300 with 8 in full color)
59 - is the text pages
... Read more

Product Description
One of the most popular artists of the 20th century, M. C. Escher, leaves a rich legacy. The centennial celebration of his birth, held in Rome and Ravello in 1998, gave testimony to the keen interest and new insight into his work, and showcased a number of comtemporary artists and scientists whose work is directly inspired by that of Escher. This book contains 40 of their articles, richly illustrated with original art works in addition to well-known and little-known works by Escher. A CD-ROM complements the articles, containing color illustrations of work by contemporary artists, movies, animations, and other demonstrations. ... Read more

Product Description
Presents a selection of Escher's art and shares his comments on his work, symmetry, infinity, and paradox. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (6)

Excellent Book! And in Excellent Condition!
I bought this book used and when I received it I was amazed at the condition. It looked new! Just a little bend at the corner of the cover and some of the pages.

An excellent book for those wanting to find in depth information about Escher and his tessellations.Not lite reading!

"I'm walking around all by myself here."..Escher

As a longtime fan of Escher's work,I found this an excellent book.I have several books of Escher's work,a couple of jigsaw puzzles,and his "Kaleidocycles" of 17 full-color ,three dimensional ,folding models.This book is very interesting to any fan of Escher's work as it is Escher himself explaining his reasons for creating his art.
For a long time, he was virtually alone in his field, that combines both graphic art and Geometric Mathematics.
Reading the book is as close as one can get to attending lectures by the master himself. Escher prepared lectures that were accompanied with slides of his work that he intended to give to explain his work. The book contains the complete text of these lectures as well as pictures of the slides and his explanations.
The book shows what great difficulty he had in gaining acceptance of his work ,which critics had great difficulty in catgorizing his work and thus tended to ignore it for many years.
While the reproductions in this book are small,as other reviewers have mentioned,don't let that discourage you from getting this book.There are other books with much larger reproductions that show off his work much better.But, if you want to get a much deeper knowledge of this wonderful artist and understand his motives and life;you would have a hard time in finding a better sourse to turn to.

Tiny pictures.
I think I was under the impression that this was a bigger book or something, but I wish it had bigger, better pictures.This is a paperback with lots more writing than pictures.Small pictures and not a ton of them.Decent book from what I've skimmed.

Escher in his own words
Maurits Escher, as an artist, needs no introduction. As a writer, however, he is not nearly well known enough. This short book collects some of his early writings from rather obscure journals, and presents a lecture that was never actually given.

Escher is well known for his precise renderings, and we are blessed with writing in the same precise style. He wrote out the script for his lecture in full, before it was to be given. That means that, when a medical emergency forced its cancellation, the lecture was preserved in its entirety. Like his geometric woodcuts and his precise lithographs, the calm of the text belies the passion that lay behind it. Escher spent decades in poverty before his well-earned fame, and pursued visions for which he had no good words and certainly no companions. That same drive was what pushed his skill as a woodblock artist down to the limits of his hands and his materials, below the limit of his unaided eye.

Although not trained in math or the hard sciences, he puts a human face on subtle mathematical concepts. The infinite and unbounded is a common idea, the finite and bounded is part of everyday life. These aren't his words, but he pursued the finite and unbounded, in tiled patterns on the surface of a sphere. He also sought out the infinite and bounded, and found it in the Cirle Limit pieces and other works.

This book is the only inexpensive and easily accesible source of Escher's own thoughts on his work. It's not a catalog of his work - most of the reproductions so small that they only suggest the piece depicted, or remind a viewer already familiar with the work. It's not a biography, although it has a few biographical details. People with the wrong expectations are sure to be disappointed in this.

I'm happy with it. It is a very enjoyable look at his cool manner of presentation. Like his Three Worlds litho, it presents a surface of meaning, but shows reflections of distant ideas and hints at his hidden depths.

//wiredweird

Not as interesting as one would expect
I feel that this book seems, at first glance, to be much better than it really is. That is, when one picks up the book for the first time in a book store and flips through the pages, one gets the impression that it will actually be interesting to read, and will help in understanding Escher's genius.But really, the works themselves are the only things this book offers, the text is basically useless, shallow and uninteresting. ... Read more

Product Description
A postcard book featuring works of M.C. Escher. ... Read more