If I am not mistaken, the word "art" and "artist" did not exist during the Renaissance and before: there were simply architects, sculptors, and painters, practicing a trade. M. C. Escher More Quotes by M. C. Escher More Quotes From M. C. Escher Only those who attempt the absurd will achieve the impossible. I think it's in my basement... let me go upstairs and check. M. C. Escher impossible art thinking Are you really sure that a floor can't also be a ceiling? M. C. Escher ceilings reality art Science and art sometimes can touch one another, like two pieces of the jigsaw puzzle which is our human life, and that contact may be made across the boderline between the two respective domains. M. C. Escher jigsaw-puzzles education art Order is repetition of units. M. C. Escher repetition chaos order I never got a pass mark in math ... Just imagine - mathematicians now use my prints to illustrate their books. M. C. Escher education math book Hands, are the most honest part of the human body, they cannot lie as laughing eyes and the mouth can. M. C. Escher eye lying hands It is human nature to want to exchange ideas, and I believe that, at bottom, every artist wants no more than to tell the world what he has to say. M. C. Escher artist believe ideas I try in my prints to testify that we live in a beautiful and orderly world, not in a chaos without norms, even though that is how it sometimes appears. My subjects are also often playful: I cannot refrain from demonstrating the nonsensicalness of some of what we take to be irrefutable certainties. It is, for example, a pleasure to deliberately mix together objects of two and three dimensions, surface and spatial relationships, and to make fun of gravity. M. C. Escher fun beautiful two We adore chaos because we love to produce order. M. C. Escher inspirational life order My work is a game, a very serious game. M. C. Escher games work art So let us then try to climb the mountain, not by stepping on what is below us, but to pull us up at what is above us, for my part at the stars; amen. M. C. Escher space stars trying I can't keep from fooling around with our irrefutable certainties. It is, for example, a pleasure knowingly to mix up two and three dimensionalities, flat and spatial, and to make fun of gravity. M. C. Escher example fun two Wonder is the salt of the earth. M. C. Escher salt earth wonder Although I am even now still a layman in the area of mathematics, and although I lack theoretical knowledge, the mathematicians, and in particular the crystallographers, have had considerable influence on my work of the last twenty years. The laws of the phenomena around us--order, regularity, cyclical repetition, and renewals--have assumed greater and greater importance for me. The awareness of their presence gives me peace and provides me with support. I try in my prints to testify that we live in a beautiful and orderly world, and not in a formless chaos, as it sometimes seems. M. C. Escher law beautiful years Originality is merely an illusion. M. C. Escher illusion originality What I give form to in daylight is only one per cent of what I have seen in darkness. M. C. Escher artist beautiful life I don't use drugs, my dreams are frightening enough. M. C. Escher drug-use alcohol dream There is something in such laws that takes the breath away. They are not discoveries or inventions of the human mind, but exist independently of us. In a moment of clarity, one can at most discover that they are there and take them into account. Long before there were people on the earth, crystals were already growing in the earth's crust. On one day or another, a human being first came across such a sparkling morsel of regularity lying on the ground or hit one with his stone tool and it broke off and fell at his feet, and he picked it up and regarded it in his open hand, and he was amazed. M. C. Escher spiritual discovery lying He who wonders discovers that this in itself is wonder. M. C. Escher discovery life knowledge For me it remains an open question whether [this work] pertains to the realm of mathematics or to that of art. M. C. Escher teaching math art
