Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of Five
Speaker 1: Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey, and welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles w Chuck Bryant, there's
Speaker 1: Jerry over there, and this is Stuff You Should Know.
Speaker 1: The Arts C edition is Jerry broom Tone. Roland. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think that's make believe stuff. Room tone. Yeah. She
Speaker 1: might as well be like, let me capture a few
Speaker 1: fairies in this, Mason Jark. First, I think it's the
Speaker 1: same thing we made does in the final edit. I
Speaker 1: don't know what it is about to explain to everyone.
Speaker 1: Room tone is you do this on film sets and
Speaker 1: in studios where you just make everyone sit completely silently
Speaker 1: while you capture the sound of the room. So I
Speaker 1: guess you can. What do you do with that? Jerry
Speaker 1: layer it in in case you needed or something. Did
Speaker 1: you hear that? Everyone? She said, she cleans up the
Speaker 1: background to everybody listening, it sounded like there's something about it, though.
Speaker 1: It's like being in church and getting the giggles, like
Speaker 1: it's really hard, especially on the film, so when there's
Speaker 1: like fifty people standing around being completely silent and farting,
Speaker 1: I suspect it's strictly a power trip. You think the
Speaker 1: person calling for a room tone, that's what I think.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna start doing that my house when things get
Speaker 1: out of hand. Room tone. Don't make me bust out
Speaker 1: the room tone on you. Well, since we're no, I
Speaker 1: was gonna stay. Since we're talking about room tone, obviously,
Speaker 1: the topic today is mc escher, who was well known
Speaker 1: for going berserk anytime someone asked him to be quiet
Speaker 1: for room tone. You had trash chairs, grab reptiles straight
Speaker 1: out of the two dimensions and throw them into the
Speaker 1: third dimension to steal all sorts of weird stuff. That's funny.
Speaker 1: Did you think so that was a joke just for you? Yeah,
Speaker 1: so he everyone knows mc esure. If you've ever been
Speaker 1: to college or taking drugs or sold drugs to somebody
Speaker 1: in college, then you've probably seen hands drawing hands or uh,
Speaker 1: I mean, that's not what the name of that one was,
Speaker 1: but it's called drawing hands, is it? Or the Some
Speaker 1: of his more famous ones are the these impossible rooms,
Speaker 1: like stairs that lead to sideway stairs but you've gotta
Speaker 1: wrap your head around it in a certain way to
Speaker 1: even make sense of it, all right, or stairs that
Speaker 1: lead into other stairs that lead back into the other stairs.
Speaker 1: It is constant or I'm a big fan of that
Speaker 1: one self portrait he did in the the Sphere. Yeah there,
Speaker 1: the mirror Sphere. Mirror Sphere. Yeah, it's cool, it is
Speaker 1: very cool. I'm not crazy about the face, even though
Speaker 1: I'm sure he did it exactly precise, but the hand,
Speaker 1: if you look at the hand, it's really realistic. It's
Speaker 1: very pretty. Yeah, I mean, I'd like this stuff. This
Speaker 1: is not my style, as in anything I would put
Speaker 1: on my walls these days, but I still think he's
Speaker 1: one of the like coolest, more innovative artists out there.
Speaker 1: And there's a great factoid that I hope will hold
Speaker 1: till the end, which are not the end, but kind
Speaker 1: of where it falls in our So what is what
Speaker 1: is factory mean against? I mean, you've killed ten percent
Speaker 1: of all the facts and this is just one of
Speaker 1: the percent remaining. That's right, Okay, gotcha. So um. One
Speaker 1: of the things you chalk about m c es sure
Speaker 1: that I found was that if you were impressed by
Speaker 1: his work, prepared to get exponentially more impressive. We talked
Speaker 1: about how he made those works too. That's the fact
Speaker 1: of the show. For me. Okay, that's the fact. Got
Speaker 1: hold onto that. Sure, Sure, I was just teasing it
Speaker 1: a little bit. I didn't know that's what you're talking about,
Speaker 1: although I should have guessed. So this is us talking
Speaker 1: about an artist, which means that we should probably talk
Speaker 1: about the artist being born. Um. And in the case
Speaker 1: of mc Escher, whose name, by the way, was more
Speaker 1: it's uh Cornelis. I want to say Cornelius, but there's
Speaker 1: no you in there. Sure I nailed the last name,
Speaker 1: but I'm spoke on name. Oh you didn't say nailed
Speaker 1: the last name. This is the point where the people say,
Speaker 1: get to the point already, Well we are at that point.
Speaker 1: That's m C. And then Escher born June not nineteen nine.
Speaker 1: As as the Grabster put it was like mans he
Speaker 1: was born in leeu Warden, Netherlands, grew up in arn Him,
Speaker 1: which is about sixty miles southeast of A. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mapped all this stuff out kind of that general area.
Speaker 1: You went on a little Google tour. Uh. And he
Speaker 1: signed even from early on as m CE. He signed
Speaker 1: his paintings, although people called him mock m a UK
Speaker 1: friends and family right, which didn't mean anything, ed points out,
Speaker 1: but it's just like, you know, an affectionate term for Morrit's. Yeah,
Speaker 1: is it Maurits probably Marites, Marit's cornellis Escher. But he
Speaker 1: could also go the way of Morris. So is it
Speaker 1: Morrit's more? I don't know. I wish, I wish I knew. Well,
Speaker 1: what we do know is that, uh, in this we
Speaker 1: should put a pin in because it's sort of plays
Speaker 1: a big part in how he pursued his art. But
Speaker 1: his dad had some money. He was a rich kid. Yeah,
Speaker 1: for sure, which really helps, as we'll see as he's
Speaker 1: trapesing around Europe on dad's time, slowly getting better at
Speaker 1: art slowly. Yeah, that's a good point because he was
Speaker 1: not great in school. He did love drawing class, but
Speaker 1: apparently wasn't you know, he didn't have his second grade
Speaker 1: teachers falling over themselves about what a talented artist he was. No,
Speaker 1: and apparently he also didn't consider himself much of an artist,
Speaker 1: although he engaged in art like he he did produce
Speaker 1: art from a very young age. He was terrible in
Speaker 1: school except that math and a drawing. Apparently, when he
Speaker 1: was in grade school primary school he failed his finals,
Speaker 1: all of them except for math and I read that
Speaker 1: his father noted in his journal with some affection that
Speaker 1: his son consoled himself by producing a Lena type of
Speaker 1: a sunflower. That's how he made himself feel better after
Speaker 1: after failing out of school. Well, and he he was
Speaker 1: somewhat adept at math early on, but um, it's interesting
Speaker 1: his his work is highly mathematical as far as art goes.
Speaker 1: But later on in life, when he was confronted with
Speaker 1: real mathematicians, he would sort of be like, no, not
Speaker 1: me a man, Like I'm an artist. Well, I'm not
Speaker 1: that kind of mathematician, so I said yes, But he
Speaker 1: was most of his friends or mathematicians. For most of
Speaker 1: his career, he was mostly appreciated by mathematicians and scientists.
Speaker 1: Those are the people who really vibed on his work.
Speaker 1: And that came later. Okay, that Camel remaining out real popular. Um,
Speaker 1: but I saw that somebody made a movie called any
Speaker 1: Into Infinity. It's a documentary, a full length documentary, I
Speaker 1: believe the whole things on YouTube. Um, and it starts out.
Speaker 1: The trailer starts out with Graham Nash saying, Hey, I
Speaker 1: called up mc escher one day just to say, Mr Esher,
Speaker 1: I think you're a really great artist, That's all I
Speaker 1: wanted you to say. And he said, I don't consider
Speaker 1: myself an artist. I consider myself a mathematician. Oh really, yes,
Speaker 1: So I'm going with Graham Nash's interpretation. Spoke to him directly. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it's crazy. He I mean, not to spoil anything,
Speaker 1: but he died, uh in just seventy three, So you know,
Speaker 1: if he would have lived to his like mid eighties,
Speaker 1: which is somewhat reasonable, Um, he he would have been
Speaker 1: like alive in the eighties, which just seems so weird.
Speaker 1: It does seem kind of weird, you know. Yeah, because
Speaker 1: he was he seems counter cultural for sure, even though
Speaker 1: his his personality was not very counter cultural. Um, and
Speaker 1: he didn't really have much love for hippies. In fact,
Speaker 1: he later said that the hippies in San Francisco are
Speaker 1: legally making copies of my work. Um. He didn't exactly follow,
Speaker 1: you know, the normal usual beat throughout his lifetime. And
Speaker 1: he was he was. He was a mathematician. He was
Speaker 1: a bit of a square, but he was also a
Speaker 1: very imaginative square. That's right. I was trying to make
Speaker 1: a square joke, but it's not coming to me. Remember
Speaker 1: that show Square Peg Square Peg Square Square pegs Sarah
Speaker 1: Jessica Parker was she and that she was also and
Speaker 1: girls just want to have fun, that's right. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: I'm going to see her on Broadway next spring really yeah.
Speaker 1: She and her husband are co starring in uh Plaza
Speaker 1: Sweet and Neil Simon's Plaza Sweet. Very nice, very excited
Speaker 1: about that. But I'm trying to align it with a
Speaker 1: Bonnie Prince billy show, but that they're like a week apart,
Speaker 1: and I'm like, I can't just stay in there a
Speaker 1: lot of time to kill, especially when there's hourly flights
Speaker 1: between Atlanta New York. I know, I may just go
Speaker 1: see Bonnie princeci Billion come home because he didn't play much.
Speaker 1: But that's a story for another day, all right. So
Speaker 1: he goes to school at Technical College of delf Um,
Speaker 1: not for very long, and then he went to the
Speaker 1: Harlem with two A's School of Architecture and Decorative Arts,
Speaker 1: which is west of Amsterdam, not Harlem, New York. Well,
Speaker 1: I think that's what the Harlem, New York is named after, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's where Bonnie Prince. He's at town Hall. Actually, how
Speaker 1: is that right? Yeah? We played there, it's right, I
Speaker 1: gotta stank on that joint. So his dad said, you know,
Speaker 1: because you know, his dad had a lot of money
Speaker 1: and made money. And even though you want to support
Speaker 1: your kids, you want the you want to try and
Speaker 1: edge them into something. If you're that kind of dude,
Speaker 1: that that might be lucrative. So he said, hey, you
Speaker 1: like to draw shapes, why don't you go study architecture.
Speaker 1: And he did that for a little while, even though
Speaker 1: he wasn't super into it. But while at school there
Speaker 1: he had a very fortunate meeting by being mentored by
Speaker 1: one Samuel just Serin Demisquita, who would be his mentor,
Speaker 1: who noticed some of his early art. I'm not sure
Speaker 1: how he saw it, but he took one look at
Speaker 1: Esher's art and said, you don't need to go into architecture.
Speaker 1: Come study under me and learn graphic design. And so
Speaker 1: Escher did. He became a graphic designer, which he whether
Speaker 1: he knew it or not, he had been his whole
Speaker 1: life up to that point. All of his work is
Speaker 1: very graphic in nature and design. Yeah, it really really is.
Speaker 1: But I'm sure his dad in the early, you know,
Speaker 1: nineteen twenties was probably like is that even a thing, right?
Speaker 1: That sounds made up? But well, his dad also, I
Speaker 1: don't know if you said or not, was a civil engineer,
Speaker 1: so of course he would be like, you draw, just
Speaker 1: go to architecture. That's what I know, civil engineering, and
Speaker 1: there's architects in the world. Just go do the other
Speaker 1: thing that I don't do. And he probably thought graphic
Speaker 1: design just meant like you're gonna make signs, right or
Speaker 1: post his stamps or Christmas paper, which he did later on.
Speaker 1: That's right, So he made a little bit of dough.
Speaker 1: So in the early nineteen twenties he started on his
Speaker 1: uh sort of a rich kid journey, traveling around Europe
Speaker 1: on his dad's time on a gap year that was
Speaker 1: really really long, very long. But on one of these
Speaker 1: trips he went to a couple of places that would
Speaker 1: end up having a big influence on him. One in
Speaker 1: Spain at the Alhambra, uh, and then just traveling through
Speaker 1: southern Italy through the countryside. Yeah, he just fell in
Speaker 1: love with Italy. Yeah, but in Spain this is this
Speaker 1: is one that didn't bear fruit right away. But he
Speaker 1: was really fascinated by these mosaics and tesselations which are
Speaker 1: described as okay, they are repeating designs that interlock with
Speaker 1: one another, leave no space between one another, and that
Speaker 1: when you fit them together they fully cover a plane,
Speaker 1: which is harder to do than you would think. Yeah, Like,
Speaker 1: if you've ever seen the ess er fish um sort
Speaker 1: of tessellation, the white fish and the black fish kind
Speaker 1: of working in one another, Yeah, that's a perfect example.
Speaker 1: And he would do this a lot later on. If
Speaker 1: you've ever played Cuberta, that's those cubes or tessellations a
Speaker 1: certain kind. But he got really into this, even though
Speaker 1: it wasn't like right away that he started doing these things.
Speaker 1: That sort of came a little bit later. But what
Speaker 1: he did do was started drawing the Italian countryside because
Speaker 1: he loved it. Loved it. I mean like he he
Speaker 1: went to Italy, it was like this is my home,
Speaker 1: and he was Quota at one point in time is
Speaker 1: saying like he never wanted to become an Italian among Italians.
Speaker 1: He liked being a stranger um, but he loved Italy,
Speaker 1: which is an interesting thing to say. I'm not exactly
Speaker 1: sure what it means. I think what he was saying
Speaker 1: was he's he he likes being a visitor to Italy
Speaker 1: rather than there's a certain amount of responsibility that comes
Speaker 1: with being one of us, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: Whereas if you can be like that guy over there,
Speaker 1: who will accept him, We're not going to throw rocks
Speaker 1: him every time we see him or anything like that,
Speaker 1: and we'll take his money and you know, maybe even
Speaker 1: say hi to him or whatever. We'll leave him alone.
Speaker 1: We won't include him in our expectations of what it
Speaker 1: means to be a local. Got you, That's what I
Speaker 1: think he was after Clearly I can identify with that. Well,
Speaker 1: that kind of came through in his work too, because
Speaker 1: if you'll notice, even in these um before he started
Speaker 1: doing the like trippy three dimensional hands drawing hands and stuff,
Speaker 1: when he was doing countrysides, he didn't do a lot
Speaker 1: of people, didn't do a lot of faces. People were
Speaker 1: very much in the background and nondescript. But even when
Speaker 1: you look at these, when you say Italian still lives
Speaker 1: of countrysides, what came to mind for me were these beautiful, lush,
Speaker 1: colorful recreations of a countryside. Nope, when you look at these,
Speaker 1: they still look very much like in the m. C. E.
Speaker 1: S Ra style that we all know. Yeah, like very clearly.
Speaker 1: A lot of them too. They're cool. Yeah, they're beautiful.
Speaker 1: They're black and white and then shades of ray, which
Speaker 1: is all just shading, right, Um, But they are beautiful
Speaker 1: in their way and lovely even. I like this stuff
Speaker 1: more than the trippy stuff. Oh yeah, yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: this is something I would put on my wall. You're
Speaker 1: an art snob, You're like, oh, I only like ER's
Speaker 1: early Italian landscapes. Oh man, take that trip stuff for
Speaker 1: Graham Nash. I'm so ashamed. No, I think it's great,
Speaker 1: Chuck you you have, but they are gorgeous. Um. And
Speaker 1: then he met his wife. His name was Jetta. Jetta,
Speaker 1: that's right, very nice, thank you. She was swift, learned
Speaker 1: from the best. They met her in Italy, but she
Speaker 1: was Swiss, and she went home and they sent a
Speaker 1: bunch of love letters. It's a very sweet story. I'm
Speaker 1: sure mccer movie would be pretty cool. Somebody wrote a
Speaker 1: script or they wrote a dissertation about the process of
Speaker 1: writing a script about m c escher. It's from University
Speaker 1: of Texas, I wrote in two thousand and seventeen. I
Speaker 1: can't remember the name of it, but just look up. Oh,
Speaker 1: just some random stuff comes up if you look up
Speaker 1: mosquito bootprint, which will come up later, but if you
Speaker 1: search that on Google, it brings up. Have you ever
Speaker 1: done that? Have you ever been like, I'm bored? I
Speaker 1: want to see what weird stuff I can unlock from Google?
Speaker 1: And it takes a certain amount of skill because Google
Speaker 1: wants to give you exactly what you're looking for. It
Speaker 1: doesn't want to give you just randomness, so you have
Speaker 1: to trick it. So maybe you'll you'll type in a
Speaker 1: weird word or the first three letters of a word
Speaker 1: or something like that, and it's weird stuff will start
Speaker 1: to come. Well, if you type in mosquito bootprint, probably
Speaker 1: only like the first three of them pertain to m
Speaker 1: C s or and the rest are just a random
Speaker 1: assortment of of links. I remember, early in the days
Speaker 1: of Google, Uh, we had a mutual friend who they
Speaker 1: did this what I thought was a very dumb game
Speaker 1: where they would try and find two words together that
Speaker 1: they would try and produce the fewest amount of Google results.
Speaker 1: And whoever could put two words together that found the
Speaker 1: fewest one. Yeah, And I don't know if you remember
Speaker 1: them doing that, but I don't know. I don't remember
Speaker 1: you talking about lots of waste of time. But I
Speaker 1: remember that some guy did, like a Ted talk about that. Really. Yeah,
Speaker 1: well maybe I'm the dummy. No, no, no it was.
Speaker 1: I mean look at me. I like mcsher's early work.
Speaker 1: I think that's awesome. I mean, what taste. So he
Speaker 1: meets and gets married. Uh, she returns to Italy and
Speaker 1: they married. Do you mean Jed That's right. She would
Speaker 1: become Jedda Esher and they had a son named Georgio
Speaker 1: later had sons Arthur and Yan, and Uh, they were
Speaker 1: still just sort of traveling and his dad was even
Speaker 1: though he was married, his dad was still footing the bill.
Speaker 1: Esher's dad mc escher's father. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, which
Speaker 1: I was thinking about it. I was like, gosh, you know,
Speaker 1: not get a benefactor. Wake up every day and look
Speaker 1: at yourself in the mirror. But if you're if youre
Speaker 1: in the mirror sphere, right, how do you and then
Speaker 1: how do you draw it? So amazingly? Um? The father
Speaker 1: Estra's father though, and like, what better way to spend
Speaker 1: your money than to just be like, this is what
Speaker 1: you want to do with your life, son? You want
Speaker 1: to pursue art and live in beautiful Italy than like here,
Speaker 1: this is what I want for you, and that's like
Speaker 1: that's the pinnacle of what a parent can do for
Speaker 1: their child in a lot of ways. No, totally, you know,
Speaker 1: it's not like, hey, why don't you go, you know,
Speaker 1: take up Heroin and here's a bunch of money for
Speaker 1: you to like lay around in a bitha. True I
Speaker 1: want to know more. I'm not I hope I'm not
Speaker 1: coming across the cynical, but I wonder if some of
Speaker 1: this was like he'll come around if I you know,
Speaker 1: to architecture or whatever. You kept waiting for the part
Speaker 1: where his father cuts him off. I was his father
Speaker 1: apparently wouldn't like that. All right. I know, I'm not
Speaker 1: trying to talk you into my way of thinking. I'm
Speaker 1: not saying like I had. I started out thinking the
Speaker 1: same way you did. And then something happened. I was like,
Speaker 1: it was actually really neat of his day. It was
Speaker 1: it all seems above board. Yeah. So World War Two
Speaker 1: has a profound effect on Esher and his work. He
Speaker 1: learned that they were making his nine year old son, Georgio,
Speaker 1: marching fascist youth parades, and he said, pack your bags,
Speaker 1: were going to Switzerland. That is the appropriate response to
Speaker 1: that news. Yeah, we're getting out of here, marching for
Speaker 1: moose Lein. Have you seen Jojo Rabbit yet? No? Is
Speaker 1: it good? Is it as good as it looks? It's great.
Speaker 1: I can't everything about it. Do I need to see
Speaker 1: in theater. It doesn't seem like one I have to
Speaker 1: see any I mean, you know, it's always fun to
Speaker 1: laugh with a big group of people, although by now
Speaker 1: it's probably thinned out. Uh. And I was laughing a
Speaker 1: lot and people weren't laughing. I like that kind of
Speaker 1: one of those deals. I mean, it's a movie about
Speaker 1: a kid having Hitler as an imaginary friend. So don't
Speaker 1: tell me that I didn't know. I know, I had
Speaker 1: no idea that was on the poster. I know, but
Speaker 1: I didn't know he was an imaginary friend. Oh, get
Speaker 1: out of my brain. Sorry, that really doesn't spoil anything. Okay,
Speaker 1: don't tell me anything some big reveal. Um. So they
Speaker 1: go to Switzerland. All apologies as long as it's not
Speaker 1: a big spoiler. No, no, no no, no, of course not. Um.
Speaker 1: They go to Switzerland and he even though he did
Speaker 1: not like the mountains, he didn't like the snow, did
Speaker 1: not like cold, weather. So they moved to Belgium after
Speaker 1: a couple of years, which is just beautiful compared to Switzerland.
Speaker 1: Belgium is nice. Uh. In the nineteen in May of
Speaker 1: nineteen forty though, the Nazis invaded Belgium, and so they
Speaker 1: moved to the Netherlands in ninety one, where the Nazis
Speaker 1: already were. Yeah, I guess they can't occupy it again.
Speaker 1: Well in its home. Uh, And they've settled in Barn,
Speaker 1: which is about twenty three miles southeast of Amsterdam. I
Speaker 1: don't know if that's how you're supposed to say it
Speaker 1: be a A A R. I like it's probably Barren. Oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: I'll bet you just nailed it. I think so. But
Speaker 1: duchess very strange. But it's not strange, but just for
Speaker 1: my English, dumb English years, supposedly English is the strangest
Speaker 1: of all. Yeah, I'm sure it's just a hybrid mongrel
Speaker 1: language that doesn't make any sense to anyone who's not
Speaker 1: a native speaker of it. You know, what is an
Speaker 1: interesting language is Welsh. Because I'm watching the Crown and uh,
Speaker 1: when Prince Charles starts coming around Prince of Wales, there's
Speaker 1: people speaking Welsh and I was very ignorant about even
Speaker 1: knowing that what it sounds like, what it sounds like,
Speaker 1: and that it was still spoken, and uh, it was
Speaker 1: a very odd hybrid. It sounded like several different things.
Speaker 1: It's all old Celtic stuff. Yeah, very unusual gallic Gallic, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think it's Gallic. That's Galic language group, one of
Speaker 1: the two. Yeah. Everything I know about Welsh I learned
Speaker 1: from super furry animals. Oh yeah, because that guy's Welsh Man.
Speaker 1: I saw them blood Granddaddy off the stage one time.
Speaker 1: Oh you saw him live? Oh I think he told me.
Speaker 1: That melted my brain. So they're traveling around still, even
Speaker 1: though they're settled in Barn, and they go back to
Speaker 1: al Hambra in Spain, which I don't think we said
Speaker 1: what that is. No, it's a it's a thirteenth century
Speaker 1: Moorish castle from when the Moors conquered Spain's beautiful. It
Speaker 1: is very beautiful, and they built it in the Moorish
Speaker 1: style and then it was eventually like taken over by
Speaker 1: the Christian like royalty that that explored the New World
Speaker 1: and all that stuff. But this castle was done in
Speaker 1: these tiles that are renowned for being some of the
Speaker 1: most beautiful geometric like Islamic patterns you've ever seen in
Speaker 1: your life. And they got to Escher. He'd seen him before,
Speaker 1: but it was I guess he was like, oh, that's
Speaker 1: kind of cool. But the second trip that he went
Speaker 1: back with after they moved to from Switzerland, I think
Speaker 1: to Belgium or maybe to Switzerland. UM, that's when he
Speaker 1: was like, I am obsessed with these now, please tessellations
Speaker 1: started drawing him. Jetted it too, says that they worked together,
Speaker 1: so I'm not I didn't know that she was an artist.
Speaker 1: I didn't either, but they World War two comes back around?
Speaker 1: Will that comes back around? And never left, let's be honest.
Speaker 1: But UH Spain would devolve into civil war, and so
Speaker 1: this meant that he was kind of stuck in uh
Speaker 1: outside of Amsterdam for a little while. Longer, he wasn't
Speaker 1: doing as much traveling. No, he was in the Netherlands
Speaker 1: and um he rekindled his friendship with Mosquito, his old
Speaker 1: mentor who had stayed in Netherlands this whole time, and
Speaker 1: Mosquito was Jewish and he was taken away by the Nazis.
Speaker 1: Eventually he was killed at um Auschwitz. I believe with
Speaker 1: his wife and their son was also killed in another
Speaker 1: concentration camp by the Nazis. And this really got to Escher, like,
Speaker 1: this is one of his dear friends, and he had
Speaker 1: um a work, a sketch of mosquitoes. When he went
Speaker 1: to his house to visit Mosquito, he found the door
Speaker 1: was opened and they weren't there, and they'd clearly been
Speaker 1: taken by the Nazis. And one of the pieces of
Speaker 1: artwork that he gathered together to preserve was a sketch
Speaker 1: of mosquitoes that had a Nazi bootprint on it. And
Speaker 1: that's what you were referenced earlier with your Google search
Speaker 1: Mosquito bootprint. Was there a picture of it? No, I
Speaker 1: couldn't find anything aside from the fact that it was
Speaker 1: a sketch, not that it was a sketch of what
Speaker 1: or anything like that, just that there was a sketch
Speaker 1: of mosquitoes that was that had a boot a bore bootprint,
Speaker 1: and that Escher hung onto This is his entire life.
Speaker 1: It was very important to him, and he was not
Speaker 1: um uh a very flowery like um like passionate man
Speaker 1: or anything like that. I get the impression that he
Speaker 1: and this is sure, I'm talking about that. He internalized
Speaker 1: a lot of stuff. Uh, and I think that him
Speaker 1: holding onto that piece of art was probably a more
Speaker 1: significant than even it appears on the outside. Yeah. And
Speaker 1: uh supposedly Um hid some people from a Jewish family
Speaker 1: during the Nazi occupation years, and also during those same
Speaker 1: years did not exhibit or release any prints. Wait a minute,
Speaker 1: I think you just said hid some people from a
Speaker 1: Jewish family or did you say hid some members of
Speaker 1: a Jewish family. Well, people members of a Jewish family,
Speaker 1: but you said from I think yeah, I mean like
Speaker 1: they were from a Jewish family and got you. He
Speaker 1: didn't hide them from right, right, don't tell the Jewish
Speaker 1: family that you're hiding over here. No, that would have
Speaker 1: been weird. Uh. So maybe we should take a break now. Oh,
Speaker 1: I think it's unraveled at the point the guys are right. Yeah, okay, Chuck.
Speaker 1: So World War Two kind of comes and goes around
Speaker 1: Escher despite his best efforts to escape it. Um And
Speaker 1: it definitely had a mark on him. But one of
Speaker 1: the other things that that had a really big mark
Speaker 1: on him was having to move from Italy. It was
Speaker 1: like you said, like he was married, had a family,
Speaker 1: his father was still supporting him, and every spring and
Speaker 1: summer he would just tour the Italian countryside and visit
Speaker 1: small quaint towns and just be inspired to keep making
Speaker 1: these Italian landscapes. But it makes a really great point
Speaker 1: here that his Italian landscapes are very handsome works of art,
Speaker 1: very beautiful, favorite, technically proficient. There Chuck's favorite. But you
Speaker 1: would almost certainly have never seen them in your entire
Speaker 1: life were it not for him moving from Italy, because
Speaker 1: in doing so, he lost his source of inspiration ration
Speaker 1: and it was forced to kind of turn inward because
Speaker 1: he hated what Switzerland looked like. He wasn't apparently very
Speaker 1: inspired by his home country of the Netherlands. Um so
Speaker 1: he had to kind of turn inward into his own
Speaker 1: imagination and start coming up with new subjects, and in
Speaker 1: doing that, the true essuer was was unlocked. Yeah, because
Speaker 1: early in like a lot of artists early in their career,
Speaker 1: they they kind of free ranged through different styles, trying
Speaker 1: to find their own personal thing. He had a very
Speaker 1: very colorful clown period. It's very bizarre, doesn't fit with
Speaker 1: the rest of it, very John Wayne Gacy, right, but
Speaker 1: you can very clearly see if you look at Mosquito's work,
Speaker 1: that connection and the influence from him. Um, although Mosquito
Speaker 1: did a lot of sort of graphic portraits and things
Speaker 1: like that, whereas Escher didn't really worry too much about
Speaker 1: humans and faces. Yeah yeah, um they were they were
Speaker 1: just kind of like almost afterthoughts. But early on he
Speaker 1: did start experimenting stuff that would later become sort of
Speaker 1: his hallmark. When he did do like a uh sketch
Speaker 1: of a building, let's say, it would be from this
Speaker 1: really like tall odd angle looking down on it, very
Speaker 1: severe angles and like a horizon, or trees that sort
Speaker 1: of go on into infinity. Stuff like that that would
Speaker 1: become very much his style later on. And Ed very
Speaker 1: astutely points out that there's something about his style that, um,
Speaker 1: I don't know how dark of a person he was emotionally,
Speaker 1: but there is something about the severity of these angles
Speaker 1: and a lot of his work that was just sort
Speaker 1: of um uneasy feeling. It didn't look like just some beautiful,
Speaker 1: colorful Italian countryside. There was something kind of strange and
Speaker 1: unusual about it. Something about the contrast of black and
Speaker 1: white definitely does it too. And he was such a
Speaker 1: master of shading that if something was stark and black
Speaker 1: and white, I mean, unless it was his earliest work
Speaker 1: was because he wanted it to look that way and
Speaker 1: to make it stark and kind of un settling like that.
Speaker 1: But yeah, there's like a certain amount of dread in
Speaker 1: a lot of his stuff. Yeah, and it's not something
Speaker 1: you can easily put your finger on, but it's definitely there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Like did you see uh the mummified priests. Yeah, that
Speaker 1: was creepy and then one of the isn't it more
Speaker 1: creepy to actually do that in real life? Stand them
Speaker 1: up like that in these little alcoves? Oh yeah, absolutely,
Speaker 1: just don't kill the messenger. And he would have sometimes
Speaker 1: skulls um featured in some of his work and stuff
Speaker 1: like that, like the one of the Eye believe called
Speaker 1: I right in the middle of the people as a
Speaker 1: skull staring back. So he had little touches like that
Speaker 1: without going full like uh, you know, love craft Ian
Speaker 1: right or Goya or something like that. I don't even bosh,
Speaker 1: I don't know who that is, Sure you do, I'm
Speaker 1: just kidding, Okay, I know those people, so uh, his
Speaker 1: I guess this is where we get to the fact
Speaker 1: of the show for me, take it away, Chuck, because folks,
Speaker 1: if you've ever seen an M. C. Ser print and
Speaker 1: he thought, man, that guy could sure draw a print,
Speaker 1: imagine cutting that out of wood in reverse, in reverse,
Speaker 1: because that's what he did. A lot of his stuff
Speaker 1: were wood cuts. Even harder than that, Chuck, is the lithograph. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so a wood cut. If you've ever made used a stamp,
Speaker 1: or made a potato stamp, basically, well, that's what it is.
Speaker 1: He's actually carving the stuff into wood as a negative
Speaker 1: image because then when you run ink over it and
Speaker 1: stamp it, you get the positive image. And it's just incredible.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's hard enough to draw and sketch this stuff,
Speaker 1: much less cut it out of wood. Right, So so
Speaker 1: just take a step back and think about the ashers
Speaker 1: that you've seen before. Imagine that they were they were
Speaker 1: originally carved out of would and now imagine that to
Speaker 1: get even more detailing, because you can't adjust how much
Speaker 1: ink is certain part of the wood block gets. It's
Speaker 1: all going to get an even layer of ink. So
Speaker 1: to shade something you have to do cross hatching lines,
Speaker 1: stipling something like that. But to get really detailed with shading.
Speaker 1: You need multiple blocks of the same image in the
Speaker 1: exact same size, with different parts accentuated, so that you
Speaker 1: can layer over. You can take the same paper and
Speaker 1: layer them on different blocks and line them up so
Speaker 1: that you have layers to this image. That was the
Speaker 1: level of the wood cuts this guy was doing. Yeah, Like,
Speaker 1: that's sort of like a T shirt screen printing, like
Speaker 1: a four color shirt. You gotta layer, you gotta put
Speaker 1: it on exactly in the in the spot that it
Speaker 1: needs to go each time, drag that ink across, so
Speaker 1: it's not you know, off by a centimeter because it
Speaker 1: would look bad. So the wood cuts, um, especially as
Speaker 1: earlier woodcuts. You can tell their wood cuts they look
Speaker 1: like wood cuts. Some of them do not. There's some
Speaker 1: of the Italian countryside. Um that's just are just yeah,
Speaker 1: are just astounding. And when you stop and think about
Speaker 1: the idea that they it's not a drawing, that their
Speaker 1: wood cuts, multiple blocked wood cuts, is pretty astounding. But
Speaker 1: like I was saying to me, even even more difficult
Speaker 1: is making the lithograph. Yeah. I think I talked about
Speaker 1: this on some other episode. Um, I know it talked
Speaker 1: about batiguing, but I also talked to in industrial arts.
Speaker 1: We did offset lithography in that social experiment high school exactly.
Speaker 1: We did offset lithography, which um basically I mean that's
Speaker 1: the process today. I mean that's how they make newspapers, posters, books, maps,
Speaker 1: kind of everything. This is with offset lithography. It was
Speaker 1: in do you remember it was in the um Et
Speaker 1: Sketch episode. That's what I art originally did, was lithography. Okay,
Speaker 1: well this is this is pre like today, you use
Speaker 1: like aluminum or some other kind of metal sheet and
Speaker 1: these emulsions and chemicals. Back then it was drawn into limestone,
Speaker 1: a flat slab of limestone with a grease pencil, and
Speaker 1: then use a chemical treatment uh to uh on the
Speaker 1: areas that basically water and inc don't mix. It's sort
Speaker 1: of all built on that principle. So the areas where
Speaker 1: you have written in Greece do not hold that inc
Speaker 1: or is it the other way around? No, I think
Speaker 1: they don't hold the Yeah. Again, what you're doing is
Speaker 1: creating a negative image, just like the wood cut essentially,
Speaker 1: so you've got this um attraction and repulsion interplay between ink,
Speaker 1: water and grease, and when you put it all together
Speaker 1: on limestone, it makes these extremely subtle gradients of shading
Speaker 1: that are kind of like a hallmark of some of
Speaker 1: Escher's more um well known works. Yeah, the hands drawing hands, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that was a lithograph. He made that with limestone and grease,
Speaker 1: pen and ink, and um did it in reverse too,
Speaker 1: because just like with the woodblock, you have to create
Speaker 1: the negative of it because you want the positive image
Speaker 1: on the paper. You have a very special brain if
Speaker 1: this is if you can work this stuff out as
Speaker 1: an artist. You know, it's uh, not saying that any
Speaker 1: kind of artist is any better or worse or smarter
Speaker 1: than the next, but your brain just has to be
Speaker 1: wired a little bit differently to thinking negatives like that,
Speaker 1: like a mathematician. Basically, yeah, your brain has to be
Speaker 1: set up that way. Yeah, absolutely, But lithography is difficult,
Speaker 1: very labor intensive. So later on he would hire a
Speaker 1: lithographer to actually create his prints after he's sketched and
Speaker 1: drawn the stuff out smart and he would destroy the limestone. Well,
Speaker 1: he wouldn't destroy it, he would scrape it clean so
Speaker 1: we could reuse it. So that's the reason. Like if
Speaker 1: you want to buy an original mc Escher, good luck. Well,
Speaker 1: there's there's no such thing. There's original prints that he
Speaker 1: made and apparently you're not gonna get your hands one
Speaker 1: of those limestones. No, but there are a couple of
Speaker 1: those left over. But he said that he wanted him.
Speaker 1: I think canceled is what they call it in his will,
Speaker 1: where they intentionally damage it. So that even if you
Speaker 1: got ahold of one of these things and you were like,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna print me a brand new esure Um, there'd
Speaker 1: be like the like the the negative image of sniggle
Speaker 1: Puss like comes through and like the hand drawing hands
Speaker 1: picture h And he did not do many original prints
Speaker 1: from those original woodcuts and lithographs either. I think he
Speaker 1: only did ten of still life with spherical mirror. And
Speaker 1: so anything obviously, anything you'd buy in a Spencer Gifts,
Speaker 1: it's going to be a print anyway. What they told
Speaker 1: me it was, you mean bikini Lady on corvette. You
Speaker 1: can probably get the original of that. It Spencer probably
Speaker 1: cut the original negative um Bikini Lady Corvette man, remember
Speaker 1: that filled with Lamborghini. The these lithographs, he would also
Speaker 1: layer those just like you did with the woodcuts, creating
Speaker 1: multiple plates to layer on top of one another for
Speaker 1: shading and toning and stuff like that. It's just amazing.
Speaker 1: I mean I did it to make a monkey's T shirt.
Speaker 1: I forgot. You used to screen print too, so did I? Yeah? Well,
Speaker 1: actually the monkeys T shirt was screen printing. I think
Speaker 1: I can't remember what what I did for a lithograph.
Speaker 1: I think something to make a notepad that said like
Speaker 1: my name and something else. Oh that's right. So you
Speaker 1: you screen printed in industrial arts? Yes? Okay, like you
Speaker 1: were you ever employed gainfully as a screen No? Oh
Speaker 1: did you do that? Yeah? No? I mean I would
Speaker 1: have loved to it. I wasn't good enough. It's always
Speaker 1: not hard. Yeah, but I mean you would draw the
Speaker 1: stuff for you? No? No, no, no, would like burn
Speaker 1: the screens and everything and drag the ink through. And
Speaker 1: he did for for a job, well like high school? No,
Speaker 1: this is it college? What kind of dough do you
Speaker 1: make doing that? Jack? Yeah? But it's fun. It's cool work.
Speaker 1: You know, you just listen to beer and a few
Speaker 1: bucks pretty much hang out with some cool dudes and
Speaker 1: you know that's yeah. Yeah, I got you good early
Speaker 1: college job, you know what I mean? I think it'd
Speaker 1: be cool. And I mean there's a very cool T
Speaker 1: shirt local T shirt shop here that every time I
Speaker 1: go over there, because that's where our friend, uh, the patchmaker,
Speaker 1: uh Katie Culp works, or at least she used to.
Speaker 1: I think she's got her own space now, but she
Speaker 1: shared a space with T shirt dudes, and anytime I'm
Speaker 1: in there, it's just a good vibe, you know what
Speaker 1: I mean. There are a lot worse places to spend
Speaker 1: your time than a T shirt shop, So uh oh.
Speaker 1: Another thing we should point out is that he did
Speaker 1: do color occasionally, but color was a whole different You
Speaker 1: had to do a separate stone for each color. So
Speaker 1: that's why a lot of his stuff ended up in
Speaker 1: black and white, aside from the fact that he liked
Speaker 1: it as well. Yeah, he seemed to be very pleased
Speaker 1: with black and white in general. Yeah, I'm not saying
Speaker 1: he was lazy. No, but let's take a step back
Speaker 1: here for a second and examine the idea that you
Speaker 1: thought M. C. Escher was a pretty amazing artist when
Speaker 1: you just imagined that he was sitting in his studio
Speaker 1: drawing all of this stuff with a pencil. Now, really
Speaker 1: let it sink in that he carved these things in
Speaker 1: reverse out of wood or limestone or limestone and then
Speaker 1: use these crazy techniques to make these extraordinarily detailed, incredibly
Speaker 1: precise and technical works of art. It's amazing. It really
Speaker 1: is amazing, truly astounding, And like you said, there are
Speaker 1: a few of those stones and woodblocks that are owned
Speaker 1: by the mc Escher Foundation puts on every single one
Speaker 1: of them, and apparently they will they will display them
Speaker 1: occasionally along with his works, right, which I imagine seeing
Speaker 1: that and then looking at the work of art, and
Speaker 1: then going back looking at that limestone and then looking
Speaker 1: at the work of art. It really kind of sinks in, like,
Speaker 1: oh my, yeah, I'd love to see an exhibition of
Speaker 1: his stuff me too. They've picked up in recent years. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it seems like he's being more appreciated, uh as a
Speaker 1: truly great artist and less college dorm wall material. In
Speaker 1: two thousand and eleven, the record for highest overall attendance
Speaker 1: in the world out of all the museums in the
Speaker 1: world that year, was at the Centro Cultural bank oh To, Brazil,
Speaker 1: which held their Magical World of Escher exhibit seventy thousand visitors,
Speaker 1: about ten thousand a day. Yep. So, if you think
Speaker 1: lithography and woodcutting sounds difficult. We'll talk a minute about
Speaker 1: meso tent Uh. That is sort of like wood cutting,
Speaker 1: except you're using a sheet of copper that starts out
Speaker 1: as a rough surface and then use these little tools
Speaker 1: to smooth out things that are going to be the image,
Speaker 1: applying that ink and then wiping it off. Right, So
Speaker 1: the places you smooth out are don't have ink, the
Speaker 1: ones that are gonna be white on the paper, blank
Speaker 1: on the paper, right. Um, it's the rough edges that
Speaker 1: hold the ink. So you cover the whole thing with ink,
Speaker 1: wipe it down. The smooth starts parts, parts come clean.
Speaker 1: The rough stuff um has the ink, and you can
Speaker 1: use this like this is this isn't like oh look
Speaker 1: I made an next this is like incredibly fine um
Speaker 1: stipling is possible with these copper plates and all. This
Speaker 1: a meso tint. And that I that you were talking
Speaker 1: about going with the skull, if you go back and
Speaker 1: look at that, that was a meso tint. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: was dew drop, very detailed cupped leaf showing a single
Speaker 1: drop of dew inside it, with all kinds of cool reflections.
Speaker 1: But Estra called this the black art. Uh. He only
Speaker 1: made eight of these because it is a real undertaking,
Speaker 1: and I think he is. He did a handful of
Speaker 1: him and then moved on to the far easier woodcutting.
Speaker 1: Right right, He's like, I came back, baby, all right,
Speaker 1: Well we'll take a break and then we'll come back
Speaker 1: and pick up with his life story again, which is
Speaker 1: I believably left off in what end of World War two?
Speaker 1: Sounds right? All right? Okay, world War two is over?
Speaker 1: Uh mc yesher was, like a lot of people, very
Speaker 1: rattled by that experience in Europe. And at this point
Speaker 1: he's still is not a super famous artist making tons
Speaker 1: of money. No, but he's more famous than than this
Speaker 1: makes him out to be. Like he he's he's got
Speaker 1: some renown in the Netherlands or certain circle tibbits. Yeah, um,
Speaker 1: but he's not anywhere anywhere even approaching how he is
Speaker 1: today or how he has been the last few decades,
Speaker 1: since about like the late sixties. Yeah, college dorms have
Speaker 1: not yet started putting his stuff everywhere. No, but the
Speaker 1: people who who most appreciate what he's doing our scientists
Speaker 1: and mathematicians who are like this is astounding. This guy
Speaker 1: is taking what we write out as formulas and turning
Speaker 1: them into art. And making them precise, like you could
Speaker 1: describe this work of art as a formula. That's that
Speaker 1: is what mc escher was able to do. He was
Speaker 1: able to take math and translated into a visual art. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And uh, you know, remember what you said earlier. This
Speaker 1: is where we are in his life. Where he is, Um,
Speaker 1: he is not in the Italian countryside. He's been ripped
Speaker 1: from its bodice. So his muse has gone and he
Speaker 1: is now looking inward for his inspiration in his own,
Speaker 1: um unique brain. He's being forced into his own bodice.
Speaker 1: Face first, Uh, this is where he starts with these tessellations,
Speaker 1: more elaborate geometric shapes. He's doing the lizards and the
Speaker 1: birds and the insects. Is tessellations really really cool stuff? Um?
Speaker 1: His brother said, hey, dude, you know what you should
Speaker 1: do is go talk to a crystallographer. He's like, if
Speaker 1: you want to talk detailed shapes and math. Uh, And
Speaker 1: he does so and that taught him a lot. And
Speaker 1: then he learned about the seventeen seventeen wallpaper groups, which
Speaker 1: is so dense that you know, how much do we
Speaker 1: even want to talk about it? Well, the we'll just
Speaker 1: sum it up. The seventeen wallpaper groups basically is a
Speaker 1: mathematical concept that says every geometric pattern two dimensional geometric
Speaker 1: pattern falls into one of seventeen categories. There's only seventeen,
Speaker 1: and they're called, kind of half jokingly, the wallpaper groups,
Speaker 1: because wallpaper has geometric patterns are usually right. Um, as
Speaker 1: your couldn't understand it mathematically. Yeah, it was proved out
Speaker 1: twice independently that there are seven teen wallpapers, and the
Speaker 1: mathematical proof. One of the things that's interesting, Chuck, is
Speaker 1: the Alhambra apparently is the only place in the world
Speaker 1: that contains all seventeen geometric wallpaper patterns. That's pretty cool. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so of course this would appeal to Esher, but he
Speaker 1: didn't understand. He couldn't sit down and explain, like, we
Speaker 1: can't what the seven team wallpaper groups are or what
Speaker 1: they mean mathematically, but he understood them intuitively, and as
Speaker 1: he became friends with mathematicians, uh you know, about mid career, um,
Speaker 1: he was apparently kind of amused to find like, you know,
Speaker 1: these guys spend all this time writing this stuff out
Speaker 1: in these formulas, and I just know it. It was
Speaker 1: almost like I was born knowing it. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: I guess he was real cocky. Yeah, he wasn't really
Speaker 1: And I didn't get the idea either that he was
Speaker 1: like take your math and shove it. He was just
Speaker 1: a little more amused that, like you've got these mathematical
Speaker 1: proofs that uh like, I'm drawing this stuff from my
Speaker 1: creative brain on limestone, limestone, cutting it out of wood. Uh.
Speaker 1: So I think he appreciated the way they coalesced. But
Speaker 1: uh and he was very like you said, most of
Speaker 1: his friends were mathematicians, I think later in life. Who
Speaker 1: did he have roses? Yeah, Roger and Lionel Penrose, which
Speaker 1: I love how it was described here, father and son
Speaker 1: mathematician team. Yeah, you know those they were matching dolphins shorts,
Speaker 1: oh man, part of their uniform. I wish people still
Speaker 1: were those. You'd you ever were those? No, they were
Speaker 1: a little before my time. Well they were for joggers
Speaker 1: and runners. Yeah, and eleven and who do I forgot
Speaker 1: about that? Yeah? That is what Hooters waitress shorts with.
Speaker 1: Remember bronze pantyhose yeah, and then chunky white socks. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And it was a very high top. Was bizarre and interesting.
Speaker 1: Look somebody put that together and not a. Um, do
Speaker 1: you remember there was a there was a Hooters airline? What? Yeah, wow,
Speaker 1: that kind of rings a bell. Yeah, that was very
Speaker 1: short lived, I imagine, I believe, so it was pretty
Speaker 1: short lived. Interesting, I guess. Yeah. So you would get
Speaker 1: asked like what kind of drink and what style of
Speaker 1: chicken wings do you want? Everything did serve chicken wings
Speaker 1: on those, of course, But can you imagine being on
Speaker 1: an airplane being forced to smell chicken wings the whole
Speaker 1: time if you didn't like it. That's like every flight
Speaker 1: I ever take. It's true, there's somebody with some stinky food.
Speaker 1: You know. If I sit next to somebody on the
Speaker 1: plane and I'm going to eat, I asked them if
Speaker 1: it's okay if I eat, Like if you bring food on.
Speaker 1: I don't bring food onto a flight sometimes, dude, you
Speaker 1: just have to. It's a long flight and run out
Speaker 1: of turkey wraps, like in the first half a second,
Speaker 1: so you just pull out your what my kung pao
Speaker 1: out of your pocket you had just in case they're
Speaker 1: out of turkey raps, not even in a container, just
Speaker 1: in my pocket. Oh goodness. So I thought this part
Speaker 1: was sort of amusing. Um, how orderly he always was
Speaker 1: with his art, and he tried to get into chaos
Speaker 1: a bit in this one work contrast Parentheses Order and
Speaker 1: Chaos Parentheses, wherein he went in dug up a bunch
Speaker 1: of trash and said, I will I will draw chaos,
Speaker 1: and it ended up being if you go and look
Speaker 1: at it, there's like a broken bottle, broken eggshell and
Speaker 1: open sardine tin and broken clay pipe and some other
Speaker 1: refuse drawn to like perfect or I guess woodcutter lithographed
Speaker 1: with perfect, beautiful precision. That was chaos his interpretation of it.
Speaker 1: He just couldn't do it. He was very much preoccupied
Speaker 1: with Kassi has a very famous quote, probably his most
Speaker 1: famous coat quote, we adore chaos because we love to
Speaker 1: produce order. And he's like, by we, I mean me, Yeah. Sure,
Speaker 1: sounded very much like an eye statement, but he was.
Speaker 1: He was very much into geometry and precision and clean
Speaker 1: lines and all that. Yeah. And also as his career
Speaker 1: would progress, this this these repeating patterns on a finite space. Um.
Speaker 1: If you've seen his circle limit series, that's where you'll
Speaker 1: find the fish or these demons. And they start out
Speaker 1: with like one in the center and then there's a
Speaker 1: pattern all around, and it as it gets closer and
Speaker 1: close to the edge, they get smaller and smaller and smaller,
Speaker 1: and you can just sort of imagine that there is
Speaker 1: no end to these shapes, that they're just going infinitely
Speaker 1: around this sphere perfectly. But again you have to stop
Speaker 1: and remind yourself this is a two dimensional image I'm
Speaker 1: looking at. And then secondly this is cut out of wood.
Speaker 1: But yeah, he apparently made a three dimensional wood carving
Speaker 1: of his circle limits series later in life. And I'll
Speaker 1: bet that's spectacular to see. Two he made it, what
Speaker 1: a three dimensional wood carving of it, basically proving that
Speaker 1: his his two dimensional drawing was accurate. Yeah, because he
Speaker 1: made it in the three dimensions. That's awesome. Yeah, it's pretty.
Speaker 1: He was just showing off towards the end there. I
Speaker 1: like reptiles aside from his early countryside work, that is
Speaker 1: far superior. The tessellation of the lizards and reptiles is
Speaker 1: really neat. That's the one that has the lizards being
Speaker 1: like crawling off of the page as a drawn image,
Speaker 1: circling around, walking over some books, and then crawling back
Speaker 1: over onto the page as a drawn image. Yeah, very neat.
Speaker 1: It's a it's a lot like the hands drawing or
Speaker 1: drawing hands one kind of where the hands are drawing
Speaker 1: themselves or one another, but they're also three dimensional two
Speaker 1: and that actually kind of jobs with another quote he
Speaker 1: had um that I think really sums that style of
Speaker 1: art up. He said, the flat shape irritates me. I
Speaker 1: feel as if I were shouting to my figures, you
Speaker 1: are too fictitious for me. You just lie there, static
Speaker 1: and frozen together. Do something. Come out of there and
Speaker 1: show me what you are capable of. And he would
Speaker 1: shout it just like that, and then Jetta would back
Speaker 1: out of the room slowly, pekay, dear your t uh.
Speaker 1: And that sort of brings us to with the reptiles. Uh.
Speaker 1: We we need to talk a little bit about illusion, um,
Speaker 1: because it started sort of early on. He was preoccupied
Speaker 1: with illusion, whether it was like these lizards coming off
Speaker 1: the page or still life in Street, which is a
Speaker 1: tabletop that blends into a street scene. Yeah, it's really cool.
Speaker 1: I like that one too, um. Or relativity, which I
Speaker 1: don't know, I mean, is there a most famous maybe
Speaker 1: hands it's between hands self portrait with sphere and relativity.
Speaker 1: Relativity is the one with the staircases and people going
Speaker 1: up and downstairs that don't go anywhere, but they go everywhere,
Speaker 1: and they circle back on each other, and it's just
Speaker 1: an impossible staircase actually called Penrose stairs. Oh really yeah,
Speaker 1: after the famous father and son mathematician team, and speaking
Speaker 1: of the Penrose Is, they'd just say, mathemagician, I just
Speaker 1: invented something I did that's amazing, completely by accident, um
Speaker 1: the pen Roses. That would be great math magician. I
Speaker 1: bet that's something for But the Penroses apparently wrote they
Speaker 1: saw some of Esher's work, wrote a paper explaining his
Speaker 1: work about impossible things like impossible stairs, which came to
Speaker 1: be called Penrose stairs. And uh, Escher was either mailed
Speaker 1: a copy of this or somebody pointed out to him,
Speaker 1: so he created something called house of stairs or upstairs downstairs,
Speaker 1: one of the two, and Um sent one of the
Speaker 1: original prints to the Penroses. So in a way their
Speaker 1: correspondence and inspiration for one another was like a set
Speaker 1: of impossible stairs in real life. That interesting. And this
Speaker 1: is you know, we were talking earlier about how his
Speaker 1: works somehow felt unsettling, and you know the subject matter
Speaker 1: as well. When you think about these the subjects walking
Speaker 1: in relativity, clearly never getting anywhere, walking downstairs sideways. All
Speaker 1: of a sudden, I'm walking back into the same staircase
Speaker 1: I was just on. Like you imagine if these things
Speaker 1: were to come alive, they would be frustrated, angry people. Right.
Speaker 1: And as a matter of fact, one of the um
Speaker 1: the one that you're just talking about upstairs, downstairs, they
Speaker 1: that was supposedly based on some a staircase in his school,
Speaker 1: which suddenly says quite a bit about his psychology. Don't
Speaker 1: you think, well, how so well? I mean, like these
Speaker 1: these students aren't going anywhere, they're not even human their
Speaker 1: centipedes with human faces, and they're kind of trapped in
Speaker 1: this what you could definitely call like a uh a
Speaker 1: purposeless existence in this building. It's kind of a dark building. Interesting.
Speaker 1: So he does finally achieve really great fame later in
Speaker 1: his life. Like you said, he was holding exhibitions in
Speaker 1: the Netherlands and in a little bit in Europe, but
Speaker 1: he did one in Belgium in ninety that led to
Speaker 1: an article in The Studio, which was an art magazine,
Speaker 1: and that captured the attention of a journalist who wrote
Speaker 1: about him in Time and Life magazines, which definitely propped
Speaker 1: him up a little bit. Uh. Then that led to
Speaker 1: a larger exhibition at the International Mathematical Congress in fifty four.
Speaker 1: Flash forward to sixty six, he was featured in Um
Speaker 1: Mathematical Games column in Scientific American by Martin Gardner Mathew magician.
Speaker 1: I guarantee that's the thing Um, And that increased his
Speaker 1: And this was sixty six, so it was kind of
Speaker 1: perfect timing with the hippies and the drugs and the counterculture.
Speaker 1: And I guess who was it, Graham Nash, Graham Nash
Speaker 1: Mick Jagger sent him a fan ladder and made the
Speaker 1: mistake of calling him by his first name. Sasure did
Speaker 1: not appreciate Um. Stanley Kubrick tried to recruit him to
Speaker 1: make two thousand one of Space Autists see a fourth
Speaker 1: dimensional film. Huh. Yeah, there's this interesting article called the
Speaker 1: Impossible World of mc Escher that Stephen Poole wrote in
Speaker 1: The Guardian that has a lot of that stuff in it.
Speaker 1: But he was he was kind of like, no, I'm
Speaker 1: good over here with the math mathematician friends. Well, once
Speaker 1: he was featured in Scientific American, that led to the
Speaker 1: big daddy of them all. He got featured in Rolling
Speaker 1: Stone and then after that it was it was all over.
Speaker 1: He was huge, dorm room, huge fight works. Uh, then
Speaker 1: this doesn't count all the sketches and drafts. These are
Speaker 1: like the actual final works. And like we said earlier,
Speaker 1: he died in two cancer the age of seventy three.
Speaker 1: And I tried to find more about his family, but
Speaker 1: there's not a lot out there, like his sons and
Speaker 1: whether or not his I mean, I guess his grandkids
Speaker 1: would be contemporaries of ours. Yep, I don't know, like
Speaker 1: he was born in eight well, great grandkids maybe, yeah, Okay,
Speaker 1: I guess if his kids were born in the nineteen twenties, Yeah,
Speaker 1: contemporaries of our parents. Maybe the old stars Yeah boomers
Speaker 1: boomery boomer um. So we get that right. In that
Speaker 1: that Journey to Infinity movie, apparently all three of his
Speaker 1: children appear in it. If you want to know more
Speaker 1: about them, go watch that. I saw one picture of
Speaker 1: him where he looked a lot like our old colleague
Speaker 1: John Fuller when John had a beard. Oh yeah he did,
Speaker 1: didn't it's a little bit like him. Yeah, it's not
Speaker 1: expecting that. So there's mc sure that. Speaking of not
Speaker 1: expecting that, uh, Bikini Babe on Corvette and Hooters Airline
Speaker 1: made appearances in the MCS. I just want to point out,
Speaker 1: if you want to know more about any of those things,
Speaker 1: go on to the Internet and start searching. And since
Speaker 1: I said that, it's time for listener mail. Hey, guys
Speaker 1: have been listening to your show since two thousand eleven.
Speaker 1: They even see I've even seen you on your first
Speaker 1: amazing show in Chicago and had to wait a whole
Speaker 1: year to hear that on the podcast. That's how it works.
Speaker 1: It's not even guaranteed that it's going to be the
Speaker 1: show you saw. Yeah. A lot of podcasts put out
Speaker 1: just tons and tons of live shows. Uh, we don't
Speaker 1: do that. Yeah, and I honestly think the live shows
Speaker 1: are a little better in person. I don't think they
Speaker 1: make as a fan of other podcasts, I don't think
Speaker 1: they make for the best just regular content. I think
Speaker 1: most people think that, but we we just so that's
Speaker 1: why we only put out the one. So back to
Speaker 1: the letter, this show is so great. I would even
Speaker 1: save high interest episodes for my son to listen to
Speaker 1: over the years. Uh, you were one of the few
Speaker 1: people that can keep his attention. I never thought it
Speaker 1: would write, but as a science teacher, you said something
Speaker 1: recently that it's so true. Some of the best science
Speaker 1: websites are children's science websites. Or if a definition is
Speaker 1: too difficult, I always tell people to look up a
Speaker 1: child's definition for that word. Uh. Really good tip, guys.
Speaker 1: Thanks for sharing that. Thanks for all your work, and
Speaker 1: now I don't have to figure out what to do
Speaker 1: now that I am finally caught up. Keep up the
Speaker 1: great work. And that is from Jenny with an Eye.
Speaker 1: Thanks Jenny with an eye. Hopefully you dot the eye
Speaker 1: with the heart, maybe with a little reflection on the
Speaker 1: side of the heart. Remember that one two curve lines
Speaker 1: top with topped and uh, I guess bottomed with a
Speaker 1: straight line. I think I know what you're talking about here.
Speaker 1: I'll show you, oh boy, since we just oh sure
Speaker 1: that yeah, yeah, it almost looks like a bent Roman
Speaker 1: numeral two inside the heart. That's a that's the reflection
Speaker 1: of light. That's where the lights coming from. It's beautiful.
Speaker 1: Thanks treasure that you're welcome to I wasn't gonna give
Speaker 1: it to you, but now I have to just sign
Speaker 1: it first. If you want to get in touch with us,
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Speaker 1: and look for our social links there, and you can
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