Original subtitles

Yesterday, I received another crazy letter,

unsigned and without a sender,

postmarked San Francisco.

"Escher, you're an utter madman.

Yes, utterly, beautifully mad.

I thank the source of your madness.

A math teacher."

How on Earth?

I feel uncertain when the sky is dark.

The hippies in San Francisco

continue to print my work clandestinely.

I managed to get hold of a couple of horrendous results

through the mediation of a friendly customer

who lives in that area.

I cannot understand why

the out-of-control youths of today

appreciate my work so much,

but it does get tiring after a while.

I receive placemats with my work printed on them.

They just go ahead and do it without asking me

or being ashamed of it.

My first exposure to Escher

was in either late '66 or early 1967.

I was at my apartment in London,

and there was a knock at the door.

And a friend of mine, Eric Burdon,

who is a lead singer for The Animals,

a very popular group,

was on my doorstep with a book in his hand,

and the book he had brought

was one of the early Escher books,

and I must tell you that, uh...

I think it literally changed my life.

So I called him, and I said, "Good morning, Mr. Escher.

I don't want to disturb you.

I'm an Englishman.

I just wanted to let you know

what a brilliant artist I think you are."

And that's all I wanted to say.

But then he said, "I'm not an artist."

And it was shocking to me

to hear Escher tell me that he wasn't an artist,

because of course, I think he is.

So I said, "Okay, if you're not an artist,

what are you?"

He said, "I'm a mathematician."

I thought, "Wow, he doesn't really know

or understand how popular and why his work is so popular

amongst all the younger generations.

Yesterday, I received a visit from English artists.

He was dressed up like a clown in blue and red all over.

She had full circles around her eyes.

It's all very nice, these little love-ins.

They came to offer me flowers.

I don't understand it.

They appreciate my work while I don't care one bit

for what they're making these days.

You make op art.

I don't even know what it is, "op art."

I've been making this work for years.

I keep wandering around in riddles.

On June the 17th, 1898, I was born here in Leeuwarden

in this stately home.

The Princessehof.

I come from an exact sciences family,

and I have the privilege of having parents

who are not only educated, but wealthy as well.

I am a vulnerable boy,

and the pediatrician prescribes me

a fairly long stay at the seaside,

at the Children's Pension Villa Groot Kijkduin.

I also attend school there.

The only bright spots are the drawing lessons,

not because I'm good at it,

but because it's my only comfort

during this awful time.

The fear of not being able to keep up is the problem.

Come around tomorrow afternoon...

After secondary school,

I attend the Haarlem School of Architecture

and Decorative Arts.

My graphics arts teacher is Jessurun de Mesquita.

I owe a lot to him.

He saw potential in my woodcuts,

and after only three days,

he forced a switch to continue in that direction.

Had he not spoken with my parents,

I would've continued in architecture,

and I have never had an interest

in building houses.

I can work like a dog one day

and hardly do a thing the next.

On those days, I stride up and down the room

like a madman, when I'm being consumed

by the desire to give shape to a grand idea

without the ability to do so.

For instance, I'm working on a drawing of trees.

The result strongly conveys the idea

of a procession, a stately row of trees

walking hither from far away across the hills

and which, after climbing the last hill,

suddenly stands before us gigantic and threatening.

Beautiful idea, and it's there in the drawing,

but not nearly as strong as I feel it.

I take comfort in the thought

that a man will probably never be able

to visualize an idea

as strongly as he feels it himself.

I like to draw here in the St. Bavo in Haarlem.

Being able to bathe in the organ's

thundering abundance of sounds

gives me an overwhelming emotion.

The stormy wind rushed through the pipes of the organ

and a thunderous voice proclaimed the glory of God.

Then a young man laid down on his back

on the big, cold stones.

The thundering wind rushed through the pipes of the organ

until the pillars of the church

could not bear the sound any more than he could.

The organ grew a lot bigger,

its pipes stretching from the heavens to the Earth,

and the young man felt such a strong wind

that he rose from the stones and flew into the air.

And then I am admitted to hospital for observation.

My gastroenterologist deems my situation hopeless

and expects my complete and utter demise

within a day or three, followed by a solemn funeral.

Oh, maybe that's putting it a bit too harsh.

I have to regain my strength,

set out on my journey.

Without clouds, the sky is blue.

That's something I've known for a long time.

But the first time I saw the light blue of the sky

above the hills of Tuscany,

it was framed by dark cypresses.

The blueness of the sky is incomprehensible to me,

as blue as... yes, as what?

Bluer than the Mediterranean Sea,

bluer than the blue of the Dutch flag.

Bluer than snow is white and pitch is black.

I cannot describe the curious feeling

this lovely beauty gives me.

My poor eyes are staring and my poor brain

is trying to comprehend the incomprehensible.

Rarely, if ever, have I felt more calm,

pleasant, and comfortable than lately.

Many wondrous prints spring from my industrious hands.

I leave it to posterity to judge

whether these contain beauty.

I set woodcutting aside for a while

to improve my drawing skills.

I want to learn to look

and see better whilst I am drawing.

I want to enjoy the tiniest details

such as a one-inch diameter plant

on a piece of rock.

I want to try to draw these as accurately as possible.

With your nose right on top of it,

you see all of its beauty and all of its simplicity.

But when you start drawing, only then do you realize

how terribly complicated and shapeless

that beauty really is.

It is so terribly difficult.

A small piece of rock, it's beautiful,

but there's nothing to hold on to.

There is no form that can be captured,

it simply goes on in all directions,

and you don't know where to begin

and where to end.

So nothing comes of it, of course.

And I won't even start

with all the beautiful little flowers.

Color is indispensable for that,

and I don't want to color.

In the spring of 1923,

I stay in Ravello, which is situated on a hill

surrounded by the foaming and rippling waves

of the azure Old World sea.

There, on a blissful afternoon

in the little hotel where I've settled in,

three new guests join me at my table:

a gentleman, his wife, and his daughter,

Jetta Umiker, 24 years old.

They've been expelled from Russia by the Bolsheviks,

leaving behind all their possessions.

Russia has left its mark on her

as much mentally as physically,

because she has suffered from hunger

and seen too many people being murdered.

She exerts an influence on me

similar to that of an electromagnet

on a scrappy piece of cast iron.

Although I decided to keep my feelings hidden,

her influence finally becomes so powerful

that on the last day before her departure,

the piece of cast iron loses

its last remaining mental capabilities

and slams into the magnet with a dull thud.

While we are out on a walk together,

I open up my heart to her.

The prettiest and softest things you possess

besides your heart are your hands.

They touch me.

Your long fingers, like those of a thief,

have stolen my heart.

Why have they chosen it?

Yesterday afternoon, I escorted Jetta

and her parents to the train station

where she left for Switzerland.

I feel left behind here, miserable, and lonely.

I can be alone the whole day,

because when I'm cutting wood,

it sets my light, fantastical thoughts in motion.

But in the evening,

when my great longing for Jetta overwhelms me,

the loneliness becomes unbearable.

Then I walked through the narrow streets

and think of the ever so sad life

she is leading,

and of the possibility

that I might make that life happier.

I like to sketch in the evening in Rome,

the wondrous, beautiful, nocturnal Rome

that I love so much more than the same architecture

during the day.

All the excessive Baroque thrills

that Rome is filled with fade at night.

Moreover, the modern, indirect lighting

with large floodlights

helps to increase the fantastic effect.

So I draw every evening

and finish the sketch on wood the next day.

I know no greater joy

than to wander through valleys and over hills

from village to village

to feel the artlessness of nature affect me

and enjoy the unexpected and never thought of

in the greatest possible contrast

with everyday life at home.

On my journeys, everything seems real,

but when you remember it later,

you realize that it was like a dream.

When I remember a scent, a feeling, or a sound,

the emotion sometimes becomes too strong for me.

And then there is the delightful fact

of knowingly abstaining

from the comfort we are used to at home.

Unpleasant things, such as a bed not free of vermin,

or food of lesser quality,

even become part of the enjoyment.

I often think of undertaking such journeys

in the company of my sons one day.

For children, it must be the greatest joy imaginable.

That winter, we were in the Swiss mountains

in that horrendous white, snowy misery I cannot stand.

I hate that white shroud covering the earth.

One night, when we'd just gone to bed,

the sound Jetta's hair made

as she was plaiting it in the dark

reminded me of the sound of a boat

when it breasts a quiet sea.

A great longing for the sea took control of me.

Suddenly, I came up with the idea to write a letter

to an Italian merchant shipping company

that operated a service around Italy

to Valencia in Spain.

I proposed that Jetta and myself

would come along as passengers for free.

In return, I would make 12 prints for them

based on sketches made during the journey

in order to advertise their tourist transport.

To my astonishment, after a few days,

I received a letter of approval.

I drew like a maniac, was perfectly pampered.

One liter of wine a day and lived the life of a prince

on this floating house that brought me

to a new port every day without any lugging.

It was delightful.

In Valencia, we disembarked for a three-week journey

across Southern Spain at our own expense.

In Granada, we visited the Alhambra.

In this wonderful aristocratic work of art,

we spent three days copying passionately.

The palaces were full of visitors

who formed a large audience around us

while we were drawing.

What fascinates me in the tiles of the Alhambra

is the discovery of a motif that repeats itself

according to a certain system.

In Haarlem, I already enjoyed giving meaning

to the entire surface of a piece of paper,

by this I mean to say that I don't want to draw

the head of a person against the background

of a room, for example.

No, besides the head, the background should have

as much meaning as the head itself,

thus becoming another head!

It was a first attempt to systematize,

although at the time, I didn't really understand

what I was doing.

I was disheartened, so I abandoned this puzzle.

I was completely inexperienced

and no one on Earth could help me.

The wall and floor mosaics at the Alhambra

stem from the same thought,

albeit the Moors only use geometric figures.

What a pity the Moors didn't use figures

derived from nature, such as building blocks,

fish, birds, reptiles, or humans.

Recognizability is so important to me

that I've never been able to do without it.

I had left Italy.

I lost the Italian landscape and architecture,

and something else had to take its place.

This stimulated the formation of inner images.

I started working with passion when I discovered

that I had things of my own that had to come out,

that I could express something others don't have.

I am 40, the age at which most people are at their best.

For me, this is the richest of times.

I showed my brother, a geologist,

some tessellation motifs.

He was interested in my motifs

from a more scientific point of view

and told me that I was unknowingly applying

a kind of two-dimensional crystallography.

He advised me to read up on it,

but most of the articles were far too difficult,

dry, and theoretical for me.

Still, my understanding became clearer,

and I began to see the possibilities offered

by the regular division of the plane.

For the first time, I dared to create compositions

based on the problem of expressing endlessness

within a limited plane.

An endless series of three-dimensional men

is rushing down the stairs.

Gradually, they lose their plasticity

as they freeze, flatten, and turn into the motif

of a regularly organized tessellation.

The motif simplifies upwards towards its original form,

the diamond.

Three diamonds in white, gray, and black

together form a cube

and thus regain their plasticity.

The cube turns into a block, a house,

and from a house, a human product.

The people reappear

to endlessly repeat their cycle.

The familiar tile floor motif on the terraces

is the same original motif again.

The diamond, the link between two and three dimensions,

the idea upon which the entire composition

is built.

The landscape behind the houses

is intended as a maximum of naturalness,

in contrast to the mathematical tessellation

at the bottom of the print.

The print Day and Night is a similar kind of cycle.

The judgment of acquaintances and friends

makes me feel that this is strange to them.

and they don't know what to think of it.

The reception is not conducive to the enthusiasm

with which I am painstakingly tinkering

and searching in this direction.

I fear that other prints

will be a disappointment as well,

because in those, I deviate even more so

than in Day and Night

from a desire for aesthetic satisfaction.

The mathematical interest is becoming so dominant

that I am wondering whether it is still trying to be art

and whether it even belongs at an art exhibition.

As a little boy lying in bed at night,

I would enjoy playing with associative thoughts.

For example, I would say,

"How can I find the logical connection

between the letter S and the tail of my dog?"

A thousand ways to get there.

For example, S, sky, bird, nest,

branch, tree, garden, dog, tail.

I played a lot of these games,

and actually, I haven't got much further.

I've merely found a way

to express these thoughts visually.

The regular hexagon, honeycomb, bee.

A new factor has been added to this,

a direct association of shape.

A fish whose background turns into a bird.

So it's a mishmash that lacks all profoundness.

It is and remains the game of a child.

And sensible people are welcome to consider it trivial.

The best way for me to express my association mania

would be in an animated film.

In the future, the animated film

will become an artistic expression

of great value,

showing more important thoughts

than Snow White or Mickey,

although I have no contempt for these products at all.

On the contrary, admiration for Disney's talent.

I often dream of the film I would like to make,

the astonishing metamorphosis you would see then.

Sadly, there would be no audience for it

as I would most certainly bore people to death with it.

Since the complete exclusion of the Jews,

I feel increasingly uncomfortable

when I exhibit my work.

It feels like I'm profiteering.

And if I'm not mistaken, all visual artists

will be forced to join the Chamber of Culture,

otherwise they will not be able to exhibit their work.

I've cancelled my membership of the artist society Pulchri

and the graphic association myself.

I think that will be clear enough.

Here in Baarn, I hardly know anyone,

and I don't know a lot of colleagues either.

No matter how satisfied I am

with the isolation in which we live here,

at this moment, I would like to have

a bit more human contact.

I have developed the tessellation pattern

of white optimists and Black pessimists

into a complete morality tale.

One white and one Black representative of each type

free themselves from the gray surface

of the back wall and walk into space.

They avoid tumbling into the round hole in the middle,

so they're bound to meet each other in the foreground.

The Black pessimist continues

to raise his warning finger until the end,

but the white optimist

cheerfully comes to his encounter,

and they end up shaking hands.

I had many Jewish friends.

My old teacher, de Mesquita, he refused to go into hiding.

One night, they were all taken away.

In '44, during the Hongerwinter,

the neighbors said, "Haven't you heard?

The Mesquitas have been taken away."

I entered their home.

This print was lying on the floor

with the nail prints of the German boots on it,

and in his studio,

everything was turned upside down.

I took home 200 prints.

These things cannot be forgotten,

taken away in the middle of the night.

And every now and then, the image looms up before me

like a nightmare.

When in the night escaped from the narcosis of sleep,

my opened eyes stare

into unfathomable depths of darkness,

the birds of despair come flying on slow wings.

We had a single rickety bike with makeshift tires,

which I rode to Overijssel

through the bitter cold, wind, and rain.

Those journeys upset me very much,

I saw such an awful lot of suffering.

I'll never forget it.

But I could keep our family on its feet,

even though my wife is now in bad shape.

However, I wasn't able to get any work done.

That was the bitterest pill I had to swallow.

After the war, I retired to my studio.

My sons now take care of the food supply.

My wife is too weak to do much herself

besides cooking.

Finally, I am working again.

It takes more effort than ever before.

My brain seems to be completely dazed.

But at least I'm doing something again.

Originally, the intention of The Eye

was nothing more than a general interest

in the human eye.

But since the viewer always sees himself

reflected in the eye he is looking at,

I thought I would show the reflection of a skull

as a variant of the prints with mirroring spheres,

because we are all, whether we want it or not,

looking at death,

and he is looking back at us.

God Almighty, I wish I would learn to draw

a little better.

What exertion and determination it takes

to try and do it well.

Every now and then, I'm close to delirium

from pure nerves.

It is really only a matter of dogged persistence

with continuous, pitiless self criticism.

Talent and such is actually just hogwash,

for the most part.

Any schoolboy with a little aptitude

will perhaps be better at drawing than I am.

But what he most often lacks

is the tough yearning for realization,

the teeth-grinding stubbornness,

and saying, "Even though I know I cannot do it,

I want to do it anyway."

The puddle is

uncharacteristically impressionistic for me,

but the symbol is so strong and striking in itself,

and every time, it is such a consolation

to see the sky in the puddle again.

But it did not come to my mind

to change anything in the image

as it occurs on a forest or country road.

It was not my intention to draw a particular puddle

on a particular country road,

but the puddle that can be found anywhere,

all over the world.

This creature,

pedalternorotandomovens centroculatus articulosus,

popularly known as "Curl-up,"

was born out of dissatisfaction.

The idea came to me when I was riding my bicycle.

I thought, how absurd.

I am rolling over the ground on wheels,

which is much easier than on foot.

God has forgotten to create the wheel,

and He has also forgotten to create animals

that can use their bodies as a wheel or hoop

to move themselves forward.

I am meeting this need

with the design of this Curl-up.

Biological details are not yet known.

Nothing to be said with certainty

about its reproduction.

Three surfaces of the Earth

intersect at a right angle,

and people live on each of them.

Two inhabitants of different worlds

cannot live on the same floor,

as their notion of what is horizontal and vertical

is not the same.

However, they can use the same staircase,

but with one person ascending and the other descending.

Contact between the two is impossible,

for they live in different worlds,

and therefore cannot have any knowledge

of each other's existence.

Like a madman, I have thrown myself

into the printing of old engravings again.

That damn job simply has to be done periodically.

Half dazed by continuous radio sounds,

I'm plowing my way through this pile of printing ink.

I am smitten by Bach's music.

A short motif that repeats itself

in various ways,

identically in a different key,

back to front or upside down.

They're almost mathematical figures.

It has a lot in common with my motifs,

which also repeat themselves endlessly.

In both, there is a compelling rhythm,

a cadence in search of a certain endlessness.

This feeling of kinship is so strong

that I often get inspired when I'm listening to Bach.

There is an undeniable connection.

I attended a performance of the St. Matthew Passion

in Naarden.

My eyes wandered past the walls,

columns, arches, and vaults,

of that high, wide, immovable church.

Immovable?

Suddenly, it became clear to me

that this church was far from immovable.

My imagination, enlivened by the constant stream

of beautiful sounds that came to us,

saw the globe with the Naarden church on it

rotating in the universe.

First, I saw the old Naarden fort

as a more than five-armed starfish.

Then I flew to the coast, crossed the channel,

and before long, I found myself

above the gray, turbulent Atlantic Ocean.

At the latitude of New York,

I reached the American mainland.

Unfortunately so, because it was gloomy, cold,

and rough above the ocean.

I cannot give a clear description

of the sight of the United States,

but I do know that it was cheerful and bright there

with lots of sun on snowcapped mountains.

Near San Francisco,

I ended up above the ocean again.

I saw Honolulu from afar,

then a whole lot of cheerful water again

and finally straight across the dense,

humid jungles of New Guinea,

Celebes, and the Borneo Coast.

How I came back again, I do not know.

The fact is that I suddenly found myself

sitting on my kitchen chair

in the Naarden church again.

Just when they were singing at the top of their voices,

we sit down in tears.

Completely malapropos,

as I felt surprisingly cheerful and satisfied.

Meanwhile, I have finished a new lithograph.

I believe I have never made anything

as strange as this one in my life.

Among other things, it depicts a young man

attentively looking at a print

on the wall of an exhibition,

which is a picture of himself.

How can this be?

Maybe I am not so far removed

from Einstein's curved universe.

I've made an effort to explain

the smaller and smaller print to visitors,

but it's becoming increasingly clear

that people are insensitive

to the beauty of this infinite world

within a defined plane.

Most people simply don't understand

what it's about.

This is ever more sad to me,

because I'm working on the next version,

which is meant to far exceed the first.

Although, in theory, the infinitely small in size

and infinitely large in number is reached in the center,

this work only partially satisfies.

It remains a fragment, because outwards,

the pattern is arbitrarily limited.

However, my great enthusiasm for these kinds of depictions

and my fixation on my investigations

might eventually lead me to a satisfying discovery.

I found an image

by the Canadian mathematician Coxeter

that will probably help me.

One way to bring infinity to finite terms

is by the transformation called "inversion"

so that it is on the same diameter.

But the hocus pocus of his words

are no good to me.

No matter how much effort it takes,

it's all the more fulfilling for me

to solve such a problem myself

in my own clumsy way.

A circular, regular tessellation

logically bounded on all sides by the infinitesimal

is a thing of miraculous beauty.

This is the limit.

The entire world is contained in it.

It is a successful attempt at visualizing infinity,

and it represents a milestone in my development.

Deeply saddening and hangover inducing

remains the fact that I'm starting

to speak a language that is understood

by very few people.

This only increases my loneliness.

After all, I do not belong anywhere anymore.

I'm too stupid to live as a scientist.

I'm not an artist either.

I hover between mathematics and art.

It's just pure creation.

Shall we take a look at some paradoxical architecture?

You're gonna have to master a few tricks

if you're gonna build three complete dream levels.

Excuse me.

What kind of tricks?

In a dream, you can cheat architecture

into impossible shapes.

That lets you create closed loops,

like the Penrose steps.

The infinite staircase.

I'm working on the design of a new print

with a staircase that keeps ascending,

or descending, if you will.

It is a closed, ring-shaped thing,

and yet the perspective is correct!

There's a great number of human figures walking on it

in two directions.

One line is arduously climbing up to infinity

while the other endlessly descends.

A sad, pessimistic subject, this staircase,

but very profound and absurd.

People do not like to talk about their descents,

and all the more about their climbs.

Paradox.

I've been officially invited to give a lecture

and exhibit my work at a conference

for crystallographers in America.

Fine kettle of fish,

I don't know anything about crystallography

in a scientific sense,

but apparently, they are reveling in my fantasies.

Well, I guess I should go then.

No better means of transport

and no better lodging than a cargo boat

if you want some peace and quiet.

For weeks, no need to assume any responsibilities,

out of reach of the telephone and letters,

no longer having to read the newspapers

or hear the news reports.

As a result, you acquire a receptivity

that allows you to really wonder again.

You feel disconnected, not only from worries,

but also from the firmness of the Earth's crust.

And then you start to observe

that infinite variation of waves and undulations

and you see the living creatures

in and above the sea, the fish and the birds,

and you finally look at the celestial,

heavenly bodies again:

the sun, the moon, and the stars.

In the sultry night, you can lie

stretched out on your back on a tarpaulin,

and if you bring a flashlight and a star chart,

you can easily commit the eternal figures

of the constellations to memory

and call them by their names.

And the moon.

While she was looking down on me

like a big lamp high above the sea,

I was so amazed at the distance

between her and me.

Breathless with wonder,

I was subjected to her silence,

her apparent immobility,

her motionless balance in space.

She became a symbol to me,

or rather a demonstration of gravity,

which is not a boring concept,

but a living, gripping incomprehensibility.

At home, I am working feverishly,

but I'm constantly disturbed

by the many foreigners at our door

and the growing amount of correspondence.

Mr. Mick Jagger asking me to design a picture

or to place at his disposal unpublished work

to reproduce on the cover sleeve

for an LP record.

My answer to both questions must be no,

because I want to devote all my time and attention

to the many commitments I made.

By the way, please tell Mr. Jagger

I am not Maurits to him,

but very sincerely,

M.C. Escher.

These orgies of color

were clandestinely printed in California.

I got hold of the horrendous results

through the mediation of a friendly customer.

The bright colors are entirely at the expense

of the publisher, who is undoubtedly speculating

on the taste of today's youth.

They were printed with fluorescent ink

and will really come to life in ultraviolet light.

I only know this from hearsay,

because I have never verified it.

Palm from 1933 never had a lot of success,

but was recently elevated to the dignity of a poster

in colors so shrill they hurt your eyes.

What on Earth does this young generation see

in my work?

Doesn't it lack all the qualities

that are hip these days?

It is cerebral and rationalized

instead of wild and sexy.

And how can they reconcile it

with their addiction to narcotics?

But why not let those Californian students

and hippies buy a color poster for a small amount of money?

My prints are not only much too expensive,

they are also too sober in tone

for the taste of many modern youths,

who are usually as fond

of the screaming colors on their walls

as they are of the screaming

coming out of their record players.

Sunset in your eyes.

Traveling the train through clear Moroccan skies.

Ducks and pigs and chickens call,

animal carpet wall to wall.

American ladies five-foot tall in blue.

Sweeping cobwebs from the edges of my mind.

I've always tried to be an observant person.

I've always tried to remain open all around.

I... I'm constantly seeing things, you know?

But Escher's work made me see differently.

One of the things about Escher's work

is that it bears studying.

You know, you have an overall appreciation of the piece,

but when you get deep into the piece

and see what's going on,

it becomes even more miraculous.

So Escher taught me to see differently,

and I'm very thankful for that.

I think one of the last pieces

I ever saw of Escher's was Snakes.

I think that may have been

one of the last pieces that he did.

And he was not a young man when he finished that,

and that is stunning.

I am handicapped by my health.

It takes a lot of time every day.

In the meantime, I try to reprint wood cuts.

I do not feel free enough from worry

to start working on new ideas,

and I'm content with that old métier.

It calms the soul.

Doing this work gives me the sad feeling of getting old,

because who would spend his time chewing

and mulling over things he made years and years ago?

It is not a creative activity,

but really a process of going over old ground.

A prerequisite for a good print,

and by "good" I mean a print that resonates

with a relatively large audience

is that no hocus pocus is practiced

without a very sound

and effortless connection with reality.

What I can say is that no print ever succeeds.

They all fail,

simply because I always pursue a vision

that cannot be realized.

My prints, none of which were ever made

with the primary aim of making something beautiful,

simply cause me headaches.

That is the reason why I never feel fully at home

amongst my colleagues.

They pursue beauty first and foremost.

Perhaps I only pursue wonder.

I really believe that the high-end art world

is going to rediscover Escher,

and I think that his artwork is going to be appreciated

for what it really is:

stunning work.

And I think the rest of the world

is going to have to catch up to Escher's work.

I think it will transcend into the future brilliantly.

The crazier this place gets,

the noisier this place gets,

the more his work is really interesting.

He's gonna be much more appreciated

in the coming years.

I really feel it.