M.C.Escher

"It sometimes seems to me that we are all afflicted with an urge and possessed by longing for the impossible. The reality around us, the three-dimensional world surrounding us, is too dull, too ordinary for us. We hanker after the unnatural or supernatural, that which does not exist, a miracle...

We do not know space. We do not see it, we do not hear it, we do not feel it. We are standing in the middle of it, we ourselves are part of it, but we know nothing about it. I can measure the distance between that tree and myself, but when I say, "three meters," that number reveals nothing of the mystery. I see only boundaries, markings; I do not see space itself. The prickling on my skin caused by the wind blowing about my head is not space. When I feel an object with my hands, it is not the spatial object itself. Space remains inscrutable, a miracle.

So the reality around us should already be unexplainable and mysterious enough! But no, we are not satisfied with it and persist in playing with stories and images in order to escape it. As children, and also some of us still as we get older, we read fairy tales. Later on we read in the Bible, whether or not with belief, about the staff of Moses that turned into a snake, about the burning bush, the mysterious multiplication of loaves, and the chaging of water into wine. Not to mention the stories of even greater miracles.

Whoever wants to portray something that does not exist has to obey the rules. Those rules are more or less the same as for the teller of fairy tales: he has to apply the function of contrasts; he has to cause a shock.

The element of mystery to which he wants to call attention must be surrounded and veiled by perfectly ordinary everyday self-evidences that are recognizable to everyone. That environment, which is true t nature and acceptable to every superficial observer, is indispensable for causing the desired shock.

That is also why such a game can be played and understood only by those who are prepared to penetrate the surface, those who agree to use their brains, just as in the solving of a riddle. It is thus not a matter for the senses, but rather a cerebral matter. Profundity is not at all necessary, but a kind of humor and
self-mockery is a must, at least for the person
who makes the representations."

MCEscher