Lava Flow from Etna 1933

Editor: So, this is M.C. Escher’s "Lava Flow from Etna," created in 1933. It’s a black and white print, and my first thought is how stark it is. What strikes you about this piece? Curator: What grabs my attention is not simply the depicted scene but the political ecology implied in this stark rendering. Escher's intense contrast mirrors the raw power of nature reshaping landscapes but also reminds me how human communities exist within—and are impacted by—geological forces. How might the residents nearby perceive the mountain: is it simply a source of agricultural wealth, or also a threat? Editor: That's a good question. I was mainly thinking about the formal composition, but I guess I wasn’t considering how that landscape affects lived experience for people. Curator: Exactly. In what ways does Escher make nature itself the protagonist? How is the environment not a simple, inert background to daily life? How does Escher capture a time of change, in between an eruption that previously transformed the land, but also right before another could drastically re-arrange its communities? Editor: I see your point. The mountain and the fields are the central focus. It’s not a peaceful, static landscape painting. There’s tension here, a sense of underlying dynamism and possibly threat, so perhaps he makes that tangible. Curator: Right. We have to ask who benefits, and who suffers when the earth's crust convulses like this, altering patterns of habitability and cultivatable land. By viewing the landscape this way, it's almost impossible to remove power relations in society. It seems to urge us to rethink our relationship with a world that can—and perhaps inevitably will—remake itself. Editor: I hadn’t thought about it that way at all. Looking closer and thinking about the environmental impact, it does change how I see this work and Escher’s possible intentions in depicting such raw tension. Thanks!