Untitled 1931

M.C. Escher made this fantastic, untitled artwork with ink and paper. It’s one of those images that demands you look closer, urging you to untangle its world. I can imagine Escher hunched over the drawing, squinting as he builds this intricate system. The density of those marks, so rhythmic, like counting, demands a huge investment of time. It’s an embodied kind of mark-making, the black ink building form out of void, the eye moving back and forth. How committed he must have been! Escher’s visual style is quite distinctive. It brings to mind artists like Josef Albers or Bridget Riley, whose art digs down into the foundations of perception itself, as well as the surrealist work of artists like Salvador Dali and René Magritte. Like these artists, Escher makes us reconsider the stability of the visible world. It’s all so intriguing, right?