His work gradually became less observational and more formally inventive. That year he went to the Alhambra Palace in Granada, Spain, and carefully copied some of its geometric tiling. But it was only two years later that Escher really became Escher. By the end of the 1920s, during which he had travelled extensively in Italy and Spain, and met and married his wife, Jetta, Escher was exhibiting his work regularly in Holland, and, in 1934, he won his first American exhibition prize. According to Patrick Elliott’s catalogue essay, “Escher and Britain”, for the new exhibition at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, The Amazing World of MC Escher, the artist replied to the musician’s assistant: “Please tell Mr Jagger I am not Maurits to him.”Įscher then studied for a few years at the School for Architecture and Decorative Arts in Haarlem, but he abandoned architecture to try to carve out a career as a graphic artist. This would have seemed distasteful to the rather formal Escher, who bridled when Jagger addressed him by his first name in a fan letter. (Many of his letters are reproduced in the standard reference book, Escher: The Complete Graphic Work, edited by JL Locher, which includes a full biography and analytical essays by Escher and others.) He had been sent a catalogue for a California “Free University” that contains “three reproductions of my prints alternating with photographs of seductive naked girls”. In a 1969 letter to a friend, he observed testily that “the hippies of San Francisco continue to print my work illegally”. His prints adorn albums by Mott the Hoople and the Scaffold, and he was courted unsuccessfully by Mick Jagger for an album cover and by Stanley Kubrick for help transforming what became 2001: A Space Odyssey into a “fourth-dimensional film”.īut Escher did not belong to any movement. Escher was admired mainly by mathematicians and scientists, and found global fame only when he came to be considered a pioneer of psychedelic art by the hippy counterculture of the 1960s. There is just one work by Maurits Cornelis Escher in all of Britain’s galleries and museums, and it was not until his 70th birthday that the first full retrospective exhibition took place in his native Netherlands. (Fine Editions Ltd is a member of the Independent Online Booksellers Association, and we subscribe to its codes of ethics.).T he artist who created some of the most memorable images of the 20th century was never fully embraced by the art world. All orders are packaged with care and posted promptly. With few exceptions (always identified), we only stock books in exceptional condition, with dust jackets carefully preserved in archival, removable mylar sleeves. Gombrich's triumph in Art and Illusion arises from the fact that his main concern is less with the artists than with ourselves, the beholders." (from the dust jacket) N. In testing his arguments he ranges over the history of art, noticing particularly the accomplishments of the ancient Greeks and the visual discoveries of such masters as Leonardo da Vinci and Rembrandt, as well as the impressionists and the cubists. Searching for a rational explanation of the changing styles of art, Gombrich reexamines many ideas on the imitation of nature and the function of tradition. "Considered a classic by all who seek for a meeting ground between science and the humanities, Art and Illusion examines the history and psychology of pictorial representation in light of present-day theories of visual perception information and learning. Mellon lectures in the fine arts, at the National Gallery of Art, in Washington, D. About Fine, tightly bound, clean and bright throughout Near Fine or better jacket with faint spotting to upper cover panel, closed tear along bottom spine panel fold with degree or two of lightening to red lettering. Publisher's original scarlet linen, spine lettered in gold within black title black, beige dust jacket printed in red and black and priced 70s. Thick royal 8vo (254 x 187mm): xxxi,466pp, with 319 illustrations, some folding and in color. First Printing of this path-breaking work in the psychology of perception that influenced thinkers as diverse as Carlo Ginzburg, Nelson Goodman, and Umberto Eco.
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