Double-Crossing Images: Intentionality and Representation in the Work of M. C. Escher
Double-Crossing Images: Intentionality and Representation in the Work of M. C. Escher

Summary/Abstract: This article studies some aspects of the Dutch graphic artist M.C. Escher’s work. We focus mainly on how intentionality and representation convey a key for interpreting Escher’s utterly impossible world. Having been somehow rejected by artists, Escher was acclaimed by scientists instead, especially by some of the outstanding scholars working in the field of geometry, who enable us to grasp a mathematical perspective in our analysis, but keeping always in mind that his prints are not only a subject of scientific interest, but artistic productions with high aesthetic value. As a cult creator in the field, M.C. Escher transposes throughout his entire work different layers of perception, which entangle a unique philosophical frame of visual art and develop the problem of infinity into sparkly stylized prints. Furthermore, by posing in his essays scientific problems such as the regular division of the plane, the infinity of numbers, the space-time continuum, and so on, he tries to explain his genuine intuitions that generated his imagistic construction. We undertake an inquiry into his peculiar mode of creation within a loose mathematical (Coxeter, Penrose, Schattschneider, MacGillavry), pragmatic (Searle), and fractal (Mandelbrot) framework, and also briefly refer to a contemporary filmmaker inspired by his work (Grimonprez), by briefly analyzing one of his visual essays, namely Double Take.

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