Metamorphosis III excerpt 3 1968

M.C. Escher made this woodcut of insects becoming fish with, I assume, a knife and gouges. It's all about how a mark, repeated, can become something else. A hexagon becomes a bee, then a bat-like insect, and finally, a fish. There’s a kind of magic to how Escher manages to morph these figures so seamlessly. It’s a testament to his deep understanding of form, surface, and pattern. What starts as a rigid, geometric structure slowly melts into organic shapes. Look at the way the dark spaces between the bees’ wings gradually fill in, transforming into the bodies of the fish. It’s almost like a visual game of telephone, where each shape whispers its secrets to the next. I see a dialogue with artists like Josef Albers, who played with geometric forms, but Escher also brings something completely unique, a real playfulness. It reminds us that art is always an ongoing conversation. You can see that Escher relishes the ambiguity and endless possibilities in that exchange.