The Leonardo Gallery: Homage to Escher Introduction by Michele Emmer __________________________________ Among the most popular ideas of our time are multimedia presentation and interdisciplinarity, including the relationships between art and science. Maurits Cornelis Escher, for a great part of his artistic life, was an "attractor" who inspired connections among mathematicians, physicists, crystallographers and experts in visual perception. The first important exhibition of his work was mounted during the International Congress of Mathematicians in Amsterdam in 1954. Escher had a very strange destiny. His works are probably among the best known in the world, but perhaps his great success and the dispersion of his work all over the world are the reasons that his work as a graphic artist has not been investigated seriously and is not well considered by historians of art. This is why the idea of organizing a conference and an exhibition of Escher's work was taken up by the Mathematics Department of the University of Rome "La Sapienza." The ideas in the above paragraphs are not from my opening talk to the Escher Centennial conference held in Rome in 1998, but instead they are taken from the introduction I wrote for the catalog of an exhibition of Escher's work held at the Dutch Institute in Rome in March 1985. (The 1985 exhibition also took place during an international conference on Escher, entitled "M.C. Escher: Art and Science" [1,2], with lectures at the University of Rome "La Sapienza.") I use the same words for the 1998 conference because the fascination with the work of Escher is perhaps even greater than it was in 1985, even though much of the world has completely changed. The conference to celebrate the centennial of Escher's birth in 1898 was organized in Rome; this was fitting because Escher lived in Rome for many years. A session of the conference was also organized in Ravello, on the Amalfi coast, in recognition of Escher's time spent there. During the 1998 conference we had a private 3-day exhibition at the Museo Laboratorio di Arte Contemporanea at the University of Rome "La Sapienza." Here, along with many of Escher's prints, the works of 12 contemporary artists from various countries were shown in an Homage to Escher exhibition [3]; this Leonardo Gallery is based on the works of these 12 artists. The exhibit was held despite the difficulties of importing the works of art for the show due to the rules of the Italian and other European Customs. (A second exhibit, in Ravello, featured almost exclusively little-known prints of Escher's beloved Italian scenes. Its opening reception was a special part of the Ravello conference session and was open to the public for an extended period. Two different catalogs were printed; one for each of the two exhibitions [4]). The title of the Homage to Escher exhibition does not mean that the artists strictly use visual suggestions from Escher's work to produce their own work. The relationships that these artists have with Escher are based on a common interest in his visual ideas. I think Escher would have been fascinated by the possibilities of the new technologies available today: the ability to diffuse artworks throughout the world via the Web as well as the visual possibilities of new media. The Leonardo On-Line Gallery (http://leonardo.info) provides another venue of diffusing everywhere these artists' great interest for the works of M.C. Escher [5]. Acknowledgment The M.C. Escher Foundation provided wonderful support to the art exhibitions in Rome and Ravello. I want to thank them for their encouragement and cooperation in every aspect of the congress and for their enthusiastic attendance at the sessions.
References and Notes
Michele Emmer |
| Homage to Escher |
| gallery entrance |
| past exhibitions |
| Leonardo On-Line |