(FOOTSTEPS)
(PAPER RUSTLES)
(PLATEN ROLLS)
(TATTOO NEEDLE BUZZES)
(BLUES MUSIC PLAYS)
Yesterday, I received another crazy letter,
unsigned and without a sender, postmarked San Francisco.
"Escher, you're an utter madman.
"Yes, utterly beautifully mad.
"I thank the source of your madness. A math teacher."
How on earth?
# PAT WEST AND VASCO: Psychedelic Sky
The hippies in San Francisco
continue to print my work clandestinely.
I managed to get hold of a couple of horrendous results
through the mediation of a friendly customer
who lives in that area.
I cannot understand why the out-of-control youths of today
appreciate my work so much.
It does get tiring after a while.
I received placemats with my work printed on them.
They just go ahead and do it without asking me or being ashamed of it.
My first exposure to Escher was
in either late '66 or early 1967.
I was at my apartment in London
and there was a knock at the door.
And a friend of mine, Eric Burdon,
who is a lead singer for The Animals,
a very popular group, was on my doorstep with a book in his hand
and the book he had brought was one of the early Escher books.
And I must tell you that, er...
..I think it literally changed my life.
So I called him and I said,
"Good morning, Mr Escher. I don't want to disturb you.
"I'm an Englishman. I just wanted to let you know
"what a brilliant artist I think you are."
And that's all I wanted to say.
But then he said, "I'm not an artist."
And it was shocking to me to hear Escher
tell me that he wasn't an artist because, of course, I think he is.
So I said, "OK, if you're not an artist, what are you?"
He said, "I'm a mathematician."
(CHATTER( And I thought, "Wow! He doesn't really know
"or understand how popular and why his work is so popular
"amongst all the younger generation."
Yesterday, I received a visit from English artists.
He was dressed up like a clown in blue and red all over.
She had full circles around her eyes.
It's all very nice, these little love-ins.
They came to offer me flowers. I don't understand it.
They appreciate my work but I don't care
one bit for what they're making these days.
"You make op art." I don't even know what it is.
Op art. I've been making this work for years.
I keep wandering around in riddles.
On June the 17th, 1898,
I was born here in Leeuwarden
in this stately home...
..the Princessehof.
I come from an exact-sciences family
and I have the privilege of having parents who are not only educated
but wealthy as well.
I am a vulnerable boy and the paediatrician
prescribes me a fairly long stay at the seaside
at the children's pensione Villa Groot Kijkduin.
I also attend school there.
The only bright spots are the drawing lessons.
Not because I'm good at it but because it's my only comfort
during this awful time.
The fear of not being able to keep up is the problem.
# Roll on lazy Tennessee Moon
# How my heart is pining
# Just because you're shining
# Come around tomorrow afternoon...
After secondary school, I attend
the Haarlem School of Architecture and Decorative Arts.
My graphics arts teacher is Jessurun de Mesquita.
I owe a lot to him.
He saw potential in my woodcuts and, after only three days,
he forced a switch to continue in that direction.
Had he not spoken with my parents, I would have continued
in architecture and I have never had an interest in building houses.
# I'll be kissing her soon
# Old Tennessee Moon. #
I can work like a dog one day
and hardly do a thing the next.
On those days, I stride up and down the room like a madman,
when I'm being consumed by the desire to give shape
to a grand idea without the ability to do so.
# JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH: Toccata And Fugue In D Minor
For instance, I'm working on a drawing of trees.
The result strongly conveys the idea of a procession,
a stately row of trees walking hither
from far away across the hills and which, after climbing the last hill,
suddenly stands before us, gigantic and threatening.
A beautiful idea.
And it's there in the drawing
but not nearly as strong as I feel it.
I take comfort in the thought that a man will probably never be able
to visualise an idea as strongly as he feels it himself.
(PLAYS TOCCATA AND FUGUE IN D MINOR)
I like to draw here in the St Bavo in Haarlem.
Being able to bathe in the organ's thundering abundance of sounds
gives me an overwhelming emotion.
The stormy wind rushed through the pipes of the organ
and a thunderous voice proclaimed the glory of God.
Then a young man lay down on his back on the big cold stones.
The thundering wind rushed through the pipes of the organ
until the pillars of the church
could not bear the sound any more than he could.
(ORGAN CHORDS PLAY)
The organ grew a lot bigger,
its pipes stretching from the heavens to the Earth.
And the young man felt such a strong wind
that he rose from the stones and flew into the air.
And then I am admitted to hospital for observation.
My gastroenterologist deems my situation hopeless
and expects my complete and utter demise
within a day or three, followed by a solemn funeral.
(THUNDER CRACKS)
Or maybe that's putting it a bit too harsh.
I have to regain my strength, set out on my journey.
Without clouds, the sky is blue.
That's something I've known for a long time.
But the first time I saw the light blue of the sky
above the hills of Tuscany, it was framed by dark cypresses.
The blueness of the sky is incomprehensible to me.
As blue as... Yes, as what?
Bluer than the Mediterranean Sea.
Bluer than the blue of the Dutch flag.
Bluer than snow is white and pitch is black.
I cannot describe the curious feeling this lovely beauty gives me.
My poor eyes are staring and my poor brain
is trying to comprehend the incomprehensible.
Rarely, if ever, have I felt more calm,
pleasant and comfortable than lately.
Many wondrous prints spring from my industrious hands.
I leave it to posterity to judge whether these contain beauty.
I said woodcutting aside for a while to improve my drawing skills.
I want to learn to look and see better whilst I am drawing.
I want to enjoy the tiniest details,
such as a one-inch-diameter plant on a piece of rock.
I want to try to draw these as accurately as possible.
With your nose right on top of it,
you see all of its beauty and all of its simplicity.
But when you start drawing, only then do you realise
how terribly complicated and shapeless that beauty really is.
It is so terribly difficult.
A small piece of rock, it's beautiful,
but there's nothing to hold on to.
There is no form that can be captured.
It simply goes on in all directions and you don't know where to begin
and where to end. So nothing comes of it, of course.
And I won't even start with all the beautiful little flowers.
Colour is indispensable for that and I don't want to colour.
(GULLS CRY)
(BELLS RING)
(SPEAKS ITALIAN)
In the spring of 1923,
I stay in Ravello, which is situated on a hill
surrounded by the foaming and rippling waves
of the azure Old World sea.
There, on a blissful afternoon,
in the little hotel where I have settled in,
three new guests joined me at my table.
A gentleman, his wife and his daughter,
Jetta Umiker, 24 years old.
They've been expelled from Russia by the Bolsheviks,
leaving behind all their possessions.
Russia has left its mark on her, as much mentally as physically,
because she has suffered from hunger
and seen too many people being murdered.
She exerts an influence on me similar to that of an electromagnet
on a scrappy piece of cast iron.
Although I decided to keep my feelings hidden,
her influence has finally become so powerful
that, on the last day before her departure,
the piece of cast iron loses its last remaining mental capabilities
and slams into the magnet with a dull thud.
While we are out on a walk together, I open up my heart to her.
The prettiest and softest things you possess,
besides your heart, are your hands.
They touch me, your long fingers, like those of a thief,
have stolen my heart.
Why have they chosen it?
Yesterday afternoon, I escorted Jetta and her parents
to the train station where she left for Switzerland.
I feel left behind here,
miserable and lonely.
I can be alone the whole day because when I'm cutting wood,
it sets my light, fantastical thoughts in motion.
But in the evening, when my great longing for Jetta overwhelms me,
the loneliness becomes unbearable.
Then I walk through the narrow streets
and think of the ever-so-sad life she is leading...
..and of the possibility that I might make that life happier.
I like to sketch in the evening in Rome,
the wondrous, beautiful, nocturnal Rome
that I love so much more than the same architecture during the day.
(TRAFFIC NOISES)
(BELL RINGS)
All the excessive Baroque frills
that Rome is filled with fade at night.
Moreover, the modern indirect lighting with large floodlights
helps to increase the fantastic effect.
So, I draw every evening and finish the sketch on wood the next day.
(BIRDS SING)
I know no greater joy than to wander through valleys
and over hills from village to village,
to feel the artlessness of nature affect me
and enjoy the unexpected and never thought of
in the greatest possible contrast with everyday life at home.
On my journeys, everything seems real.
But when you remember it later,
you realise that it was like a dream.
When I remember a sense, a feeling or a sound,
the emotion sometimes becomes too strong for me.
And then there is the delightful fact of knowingly abstaining
from the comfort we are used to at home.
Unpleasant things such as a bed not free of vermin
or food of lesser quality,
even become part of the enjoyment.
I often think of undertaking such journeys
in the company of my sons one day.
For children, it must be the greatest joy imaginable.
(SPEAKS ITALIAN)
(CHEERING)
That winter, we were in the Swiss mountains
in that horrendous white, snowy misery I cannot stand.
I hate that white shroud covering the earth.
One night, when we'd just gone to bed,
the sound Jetta's hair made while she was plaiting it in the dark,
reminded me of the sound of a boat when it breasts a quiet sea.
A great longing for the sea took control of me.
Suddenly, I came up with the idea to write a letter
to an Italian merchant shipping company
that operated a service around Italy to Valencia in Spain.
I proposed that Jetta and myself
would come along as passengers for free.
In return, I would make 12 prints for them
based on sketches made during the journey
in order to advertise their tourist transport.
To my astonishment, after a few days,
I received a letter of approval.
I drew like a maniac, was perfectly pampered,
one litre of wine a day and lived the life of a prince
on this floating house that brought me to a new port
every day without any lugging.
It was delightful.
(GULLS CRY)
(HORN BLOWS)
In Valencia, we disembarked for a three-week journey
across southern Spain at our own expense.
In Granada, we visited the Alhambra.
In this wonderful aristocratic work of art,
we spent three days copying passionately.
The palaces were full of visitors who formed a large audience
around us while we were drawing.
What fascinates me in the tiles of the Alhambra
is the discovery of a motif that repeats itself
according to a certain system.
In Haarlem, I already enjoyed giving meaning
to the entire surface of a piece of paper.
By this I mean to say. that I don't want to draw the head of a person
against the background of a room, for example.
No, besides the head, the background
should have as much meaning as the head itself,
thus becoming another head.
It was a first attempt to systematise,
although, at the time, I didn't really understand what I was doing.
I was disheartened, so I abandoned this puzzle.
I was completely inexperienced and no-one on earth could help.
The wall and floor mosaics at the Alhambra stem from the same thought,
albeit, the Moors only use geometric figures.
What a pity the Moors didn't use figures derived from nature,
such as building blocks, fish, birds, reptiles or humans.
Recognisability is so important to me
that I've never been able to do without it.
(BELL RINGS)
(CHATTER)
I had left Italy, I lost the Italian landscape and architecture
and something else had to take its place.
This stimulated the formation of inner images.
I started working with passion when I discovered
that I had things of my own that had to come out,
that I could express something others don't have.
I am 40, the age at which most people are at their best.
For me, this is the richest of times.
I showed my brother, a geologist, some tessellation motifs.
He was interested in my motifs from a more scientific point of view
and told me that I was unknowingly applying
a kind of two-dimensional crystallography.
He advised me to read up on it but most of the articles
were far too difficult, dry and theoretical for me.
Still, my understanding became clearer and I began to see
the possibilities offered by the regular division of the plane.
For the first time, I dared to create compositions
based on the problem of expressing endlessness
within a limited plane.
An endless series of three-dimensional men
is rushing down the stairs.
Gradually, they lose their plasticity as they freeze,
flatten and turn into the motif of a regularly organised tessellation.
The motif simplifies upwards towards its original form, the diamond.
Three diamonds in white, grey and black,
together form a cube and thus regain their plasticity.
The cube turns into a block, a house
and from the house, a human product.
The people reappear to endlessly repeat their cycle.
The familiar tiled-floor motif on the terraces
is the same original motif again, the diamond,
the link between two and three dimensions.
the idea upon which the entire composition is built.
The landscape behind the houses is intended
as a maximum of naturalness, in contrast
to the mathematical tessellation at the bottom of the print.
The print Day And Night is a similar kind of cycle.
(SQUAWKING)
The judgement of acquaintances and friends
makes me feel that this is strange to them
and they don't know what to think of it.
The reception is not conducive to the enthusiasm
with which I am painstakingly tinkering
and searching in this direction.
I fear that other prints will be a disappointment as well
because, in those, I deviate even more so than in Day And Night
from a desire for aesthetic satisfaction.
The mathematical interest is becoming so dominant
that I am wondering whether it is still trying to be art
and whether it even belongs at an art exhibition.
As a little boy lying in bed at night,
I would enjoy playing with associative thoughts.
For example, I would say, how can I find the logical connection
between the letter S and the tail of my dog?
A thousand ways to get there.
For example. S - sky,
birds, nest, branch, tree,
garden, dog, tail.
I've played a lot of these games and actually I haven't got much further.
(BUZZING) I've merely found a way
to express these thoughts visually.
The regular hexagon, honeycomb, bee.
A new factor has been added to this,
a direct association of shape.
A fish whose background turns into a bird.
So, it's a mishmash that lacks all profoundness.
It is and remains the game of a child...
..and sensible people are welcome to consider it trivial.
The best way for me to express my association mania
would be in an animated film.
In the future, the animated film will become an artistic expression
of great value, showing more important thoughts
than Snow White or Mickey,
although I have no contempt for these products at all,
on the contrary, admiration for Disney's talent.
(BELL RINGS / CHATTER)
I often dream of the film I would like to make,
the astonishing metamorphoses you would see then.
Sadly, there would be no audience for it,
as I would most certainly bore people to death with it.
Since the complete exclusion of the Jews,
I feel increasingly uncomfortable when I exhibit my work.
It feels like I'm profiteering.
And, if I'm not mistaken, all visual artists
will be forced to join the Chamber of Culture.
Otherwise, they will not be able to exhibit their work.
I've cancelled my membership of the artists society, Pulchri,
and the graphic association myself.
I think that will be clear enough.
Here in Baarn,
I hardly know anyone and I don't know a lot of colleagues either.
No matter how satisfied I am with the isolation
in which we live here, at this moment,
I would like to have a bit more human contact.
I have developed the tessellation pattern
of white optimists and black pessimists
into a complete morality tale.
One white and one black representative of each type
free themselves from the grey surface of the back wall
and walk into space.
They avoid tumbling into the round hole in the middle,
so they're bound to meet each other in the foreground.
The black pessimist continues to raise his warning finger
until the end but the white optimist cheerfully
comes to his encounter and they end up shaking hands.
I had many Jewish friends.
My old teacher, de Mesquita, he refused to go into hiding.
One night, they were all taken away.
In '44, during the hunger winter, the neighbours said,
"Haven't you heard? The Mesquitas have been taken away."
I entered their home.
This print was lying on the floor with the nail prints
of the German boots on it.
And in his studio, everything was turned upside down.
I took home 200 prints.
These things cannot be forgotten,
taken away in the middle of the night.
And every now and then, the image looms up before me
like a nightmare.
When, in the night, escaped from the narcosis of sleep,
my opened eyes stare into unfathomable depths of darkness.
The birds of despair come flying on slow wings.
We had a single rickety bike
with makeshift tyres which I rode to Overijssel
through the bitter cold wind and rain.
Those journeys upset me very much.
I saw such an awful lot of suffering.
I'll never forget it.
But I could keep our family on its feet.
Even though my wife is now in bad shape.
However, I wasn't able to get any work done
and that was the bitterest pill I had to swallow.
(CHEERING)
(JAZZ MUSIC PLAYS)
After the war, I retired to my studio.
My sons now take care of the food supply.
My wife is too weak to do much herself besides cooking.
(JAZZ MUSIC PLAYS)
Finally, I am working again.
It takes more effort than ever before.
My brain seems to be completely dazed
but at least I'm doing something again.
Originally, the intention of The Eye was nothing more
than a general interest in the human eye.
But since the viewer always sees himself
reflected in the eye he is looking at,
I thought I would show the reflection of a skull
as a variant of the prints with mirroring spheres,
because we are all, whether we want it or not,
looking at death
and he is looking back at us.
God Almighty, I wish I would learn to draw a little better.
What exertion and determination it takes to try and do it well.
Every now and then. I'm close a delirium from pure nerves.
It's really only a matter of dogged persistence
with continuous pitiless self-criticism.
Talent, and such, is actually just hogwash, for the most part.
Any schoolboy with a little aptitude
will perhaps be better at drawing than I am.
But what he most often lacks is the tough yearning for realisation,
the teeth-grinding stubbornness
and saying, "Even though I know I cannot do it,
"I want to do it anyway."
The Puddle is uncharacteristically impressionistic for me
but the symbol is so strong and striking in itself
and every time it is such a consolation
to see the sky in the puddle again
that it did not come to my mind to change anything in the image
as it occurs on a forest or country road.
It was not my intention to draw a particular puddle
on a particular country road but the puddle that can be found
anywhere all over the world.
This creature,
Pedalternorotandomovens centroculatus articulosus,
popularly known as Curl-up,
was born out of dissatisfaction.
The idea came to me when I was riding my bicycle.
I thought, "How absurd. I am rolling over the ground on wheels,
"which is much easier than on foot."
God has forgotten to create the wheel
and he has also forgotten to create animals that can use their bodies
as a wheel or hoop to move themselves forward.
I am meeting this need with the design of this Curl-up.
Biological details are not yet known.
Nothing could be said with certainty about its reproduction.
Three surfaces of the Earth intersect at a right angle
and people live on each of them.
Two inhabitants of different worlds cannot live on the same floor
as their notion of what is horizontal and vertical
is not the same. However, they can use the same staircase
but with one person ascending and the other descending.
Contact between the two is impossible,
for they live in different worlds and therefore
cannot have any knowledge of each other's existence.
Like a madman, I have thrown myself
into the printing of old engravings again.
That damn job simply has to be done periodically.
Half dazed by continuous radio sounds,
I'm ploughing my way through this pile of printing ink.
JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH: Cello Suite No.1 in G
I am smitten by Bach's music,
a short motif that repeats itself in various ways,
identically in a different key back to front or upside down.
They are almost mathematical figures.
It has a lot in common with my motifs,
which also repeat themselves endlessly.
In both, there is a compelling rhythm,
a cadence in search of a certain endlessness.
This feeling of kinship is so strong that I often get inspired
when I'm listening to Bach. There is an undeniable connection.
I attended a performance of the St Matthew Passion in Naarden.
My eyes wandered past the walls, columns, arches
and vaults of that high, wide, immovable church.
# JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH: St Matthew Passion
Immovable? Suddenly, it became clear to me that this church
was far from immovable.
My imagination enlivened by the constant stream
of beautiful sounds that came to us,
saw the globe with the Naarden Church on it
rotating in the universe.
First, I saw the old Naarden fort
as a more-than-five-armed starfish.
Then I flew to the coast, crossed the Channel and, before long,
I found myself above the grey, turbulent Atlantic Ocean.
At the latitude of New York, I reached the American mainland.
And fortunately so, because it was gloomy,
cold and rough above the ocean.
I cannot give a clear description of the sight of the United States
but I do know that it was cheerful and bright there
with lots of sun on snow-capped mountains.
Near San Francisco, I ended up above the ocean again.
I saw Honolulu from afar.
Then a whole lot of cheerful water again.
And finally, straight across the dense, humid jungles
of New Guinea, Celebes and the Borneo coast.
How I came back again and I do not know.
The fact is that I suddenly found myself sitting on my kitchen chair
in the Naarden Church again.
Just when they were singing at the top of their voices,
we sit down in tears,
completely malapropos, as I felt surprisingly cheerful and satisfied.
Meanwhile, I have finished a new lithograph.
I believe I have never made anything
as strange as this one in my life.
Among other things, it depicts a young man
attentively looking at a print on the wall of an exhibition,
which is a picture of himself.
How can this be?
Maybe I am not so far removed from Einstein's curved universe.
I've made an effort to explain
the smaller and smaller print to visitors
but it's becoming increasingly clear that people are insensitive
to the beauty of this infinite world within a defined plane.
Most people simply don't understand what it's about.
This is even more sad to me because I'm working on the next version,
which is meant to far exceed the first.
Although, in theory, the infinitely small in size
and infinitely large in number is reached in the centre,
this work only partially satisfies.
It remains a fragment because outwards
the pattern is arbitrarily limited.
However, my great enthusiasm for these kinds of depictions
and my fixation on my investigations
might eventually lead me to a satisfying discovery.
I found an image by the Canadian mathematician Coxeter
that will probably help me.
One way to bring infinity to finite terms
is by the transformation called inversion,
so that it is on the same diameter.
But the hocus-pocus of his words are no good to me.
No matter how much effort it takes, it's all the more fulfilling
for me to solve such a problem myself
in my own clumsy way.
GUSTAV HOLST: The Planets - Jupiter, the Bringer of Jollity
A circular regular tessellation logically bounded on all sides
by the infinitesimal is a thing of miraculous beauty.
This is the limit.
The entire world is contained in it.
It is a successful attempt at visualising infinity
and it represents a milestone in my development.
Deeply saddening and hangover-inducing remains the fact
that I'm starting to speak a language that is understood
by very few people.
This only increases my loneliness.
After all, I do not belong anywhere any more.
I'm too stupid to live as a scientist.
I'm not an artist either.
I hover between mathematics and art.
I'm working on the design of a new print with a staircase
that keeps ascending, or descending, if you will.
It is a closed ring-shaped thing
and yet the perspective is correct.
There's a great number of human figures walking on it
in two directions. One line is arduously
climbing up to infinity, while the other
endlessly descends.
A sad, pessimistic subject this staircase.
But very profound and absurd.
People do not like to talk about their descents
and all the more about their climbs.
(HORN BLOWS)
I have been officially invited to give a lecture
and exhibit my work at a conference for crystallographers in America.
Fine kettle of fish.
I didn't know anything about crystallography
in a scientific sense but apparently they are revelling in my fantasies.
Well, I guess I should go then.
No better means of transport and no better lodging than a cargo boat,
if you want some peace and quiet.
Four weeks, no need to assume any responsibilities.
Put of reach of the telephone and letters,
no longer having to read the newspapers or hear the news reports.
As a result, you acquire a receptivity
that allows you to really wonder again.
You feel disconnected, not only from worries,
but also from the firmness of the Earth's crust.
Then you start to observe that infinite variation
of waves and undulations and you see the living creatures
in and above the sea, the fish and the birds.
And you finally look at the celestial heavenly bodies again.
The sun, the moon
and the stars.
In the sultry night,
you can lie stretched out on your back on a tarpaulin
and if you bring a flashlight and a star chart,
you can easily commit the eternal figures of the constellations
to memory and call them by their names.
And the moon, while she was looking down on me
like a big lamp high above the sea,
I was so amazed at the distance between her and me.
Breathless with wonder, I was subjected to her silence,
her apparent immobility, her motionless balance in space.
She became a symbol to me, or rather a demonstration of gravity,
which is not a boring concept
but a living, gripping incomprehensibility.
At home, I am working feverishly
but I'm constantly disturbed by the many foreigners at our door
and the growing amount of correspondence.
Mr Mick Jagger asking me to design a picture
or two place at his disposal unpublished work
to reproduce on the cover sleeve for an LP record.
My answer to both questions must be no
as I want to devote all my time and attention
to the many commitments I made.
By the way, please tell Mr Jagger
I am not Maurits to him
but, very sincerely, MC Escher.
(ROCK MUSIC PLAYS)
These orgies of colour were clandestinely printed in California.
I got hold of the horrendous results
through the mediation of a friendly customer.
The bright colours are entirely at the expense of the publisher,
who is undoubtedly speculating on the taste of today's youth.
They were printed with fluorescent ink
and will really come to life in ultraviolet light.
I only know this from hearsay because I have never verified it.
(INDISTINCT LYRICS)
Palm, from 1933, never had a lot of success
but was recently elevated to the dignity of a poster
in colours so shrill they hurt your eyes.
What on earth does this young generation see in my work?
Doesn't it lack all the qualities that are hip these days?
It is cerebral and rationalised instead of wild and sexy.
And how can they reconcile with their addiction to narcotics?
But why not let those Californian students and hippies
buy a colour poster for a small amount of money?
My prints are not only much too expensive,
they are also too sober in tone for the taste of many modern youths
who are usually as fond of the screaming colours on their walls
as they are of the screaming coming out of their record players.
# The sunset in your eyes
# Travelling on the train through clear Moroccan skies
# Ducks and pigs and chickens call
# Animal carpet wall-to-wall
# American ladies five-foot tall in blue
# Sweeping cobwebs from the edges of my mind. #
I've always tried to be an observant person.
I've always tried to remain open all around.
I... I... I'm constantly seeing things, you know.
But Escher's work made me see differently.
One of the things about Escher's work is that
it bears studying.
You know, you have an overall appreciation of the piece
but when you get deep into the piece and see what's going on,
it becomes even more miraculous.
So, Escher taught me to see differently
and I'm very thankful for that.
I think one of the last pieces I ever saw of Escher's was Snakes.
I think that may have been one of the last pieces that he did.
And he was not a young man when he finished that
and that is stunning.
I am handicapped by my health,
it takes a lot of time every day.
In the meantime, I try to reprint woodcuts.
I do not feel free enough from worry to start working on new ideas
and I'm content with that old metier.
It calms the soul.
Doing this work gives me the sad feeling of getting old
because who would spend his time chewing and mulling over things
he made years and years ago?
It is not a creative activity
but really a process of going over old ground.
A prerequisite for a good print
and, by good, I mean a print that resonates
with a relatively large audience,
is that no hocus-pocus is practised without a very sound
and effortless connection with reality.
What I can say is that no print ever succeeds.
They all fail simply because I always pursue a vision
that cannot be realised.
My prints, none of which were ever made with the primary aim
of making something beautiful, simply caused me headaches.
That is the reason why I never feel fully at home amongst my colleagues.
They pursue beauty first and foremost.
Perhaps I only pursue wonder.
I really believe that the high-end art world
is going to rediscover Escher and I think that his artwork
is going to be appreciated for what it really is, stunning work.
And I think the rest of the world is going to have to catch up
to Escher's work.
I think it will... it will transcend into the future brilliantly.
The crazier this place gets, the noisier this place gets,
you know, the more his work is really interesting.
He's going to be much more appreciated
in the coming... in the coming years. I really feel it.