M.C. Escher Documentary (by CINEMEDIA-NPS-RNTV) [1999]

mmm in the woodcut entitled metamorphosis the birds fees and fish that emerge from the background suddenly give way to a view of a southern Italian town precise in every detail Maurits Escher lived in Italy for thirteen years it was undoubtedly the happiest period in his life he met his wife to have his three sons were born there and he produced almost half of his woodcuts and lithographs in Italy if he ever needed a landscape Street or building for one of his later Prince he pulled out one of his sketches from this period it in this way he was able to make use of his unremitting nostalgia for his Italian years and and home well %uh the duck city of harlem in 1920 a slight figure reflected in a chandelier at the city's cathedral church rights to a friend about what he feels when he listens to the organ on on suddenly a gale rushed through the pipes at the organ and a thundering voice proclaims the glory of God then the young man lay down his back on the cold stones the large cold stones while the hurricane blew and the voice thundered the columns at the church could bear the sound no more than he could they stretched as a person stretches when waking up so much so that they seemed about to break and the young man lay on his back on the cold stones at the church and stretched out his arms as if to be crucified and above him he saw the swaying and undulating columns the organ grew much larger the pipes reach from the earth to the heavens and the young man felt such a strong winds that he rose up from the stones and flew into the sky between the swaying columns Mark Escher the young man blown out to the church by Bach has just moved to harlem he often goes to listen to the church organ as this is the best way to get rid of a bad mood a some he often has such moods he lives in lodgings alone far away from the city of Hama where he spent his youth he's far away from his friends to whom he writes long letters and far away from the girl he's in love with with whom he also corresponds her portrait hangs on his bedroom wall he suspects though that his love is unrequited yesterday in a sentimental mood I picked up my cello Mike rights to head there was a thick layer of dust on it and I kept my housemates awake until half past two with my melancholy lamentations ball onto strings because the G in the sea have long since snapped I was lit he really by the scholar in which I've placed an electric light after all what is man after a vain attempt to pass his high school exams my cash is worried parents sent him to harlem they see it as one of the few possibilities left to acquit their son for society by having him learn a proper craft he attends a school that teaches everything from working with enamel to designing houses it bend their their score for Hoboken to see on the could stay and how long for how and met a TD on bash Dec 22 CEDIA dot muscle on government-owned us mice and dusted the only team come across well being of the dot-com and that comic and on the Honda home the men their hash yes only Mesquita the stuff and he'll become the half request us and d have foreseen the the the nor use needed you can tell stealing from the bookstore to Mactan the date the stuff that like Boston and the as atoms are you actually need a blast from the stick to it ha CDN def doohan house ha ficus and I saw a while too high for some reason to feel a county your city to have met with no heat was asked and my father have too much good food sex no effort backed up will come I have 10 vicious woodcuts from his Harlem period is called never think before you begin a lonely figure carrying a dim lantern advances cautiously along a dangerous mountain path it's a perfect analogy if his decision to make a living as a graphic artist it took more than 30 years for him to and enough from his work to live on luckily he had rich parents who didn't mind regularly helping him out financially mark grew up in a well-off family that lived in an enormous house with lotsa sevens in his boyhood room with photographs of painting seat seen on holiday trips abroad with his parents mainly Flemish primitives because the only thought a painting was really interesting if it dated from before the Renaissance I love the boobs whore and i'm mark bus there am a bus that take a less for my family fresh at purpose to follow us okay for these horror of sukuk the Harvard to take a less of us a sore thumb fattening Mac doesn't need to have the second at some work or yet taken the Avaya li a:link us hey gonna to valve attack on hold my hand the money that's on a geek final static from manTech some and see how house your now he sits in his room in harlem drawing day in day out in every imaginable style their assignments from his teachers as well as his own ideas going through his mind and often leading into desperation a whole lotta junk is shooting around in my head upside down he notes when struggling yet again the drawing he chooses the subject dance of death for a talkie has to give its cool dance of death and life for two expressions with the same meaning he tells his fellow pupils in a three hour lecture what else do we do other than dance death into our souls but even more interesting than his belt schmitz is perhaps what Asha says about making woodcuts someone like all by made such a powerful and intense series of prints precisely because he had to restrict himself to black and white and precisely because cutting a picture into Word is such a difficult process a graphic artist is in a better position to express an idea clearly and purely and is less inclined than a painter to be tempted to produce something with a hollow affect using as few means as possible to express an idea as clearly as possible is an ideal he would always cherish the new just how expressing an idea of telling a story preoccupies him can be read in a letter to one of his friends in Arnhem when I walked home on Saturday night he writes I suddenly saw or a wonderful row of trees in the moonlight but I'd never noticed before had an incredible urge to make something of it and that's what I'm doing now but I'm a bit afraid of the proverbial storm in a teacup because I've often had these impulses a few days later he adds a stately row of trees that stroll over the distant hills and suddenly after climbing the last hill stand in front of us enormous and threatening isn't that a wonderful idea that's the essence but it's never as intense as I feel it I console myself with the thought that a man can never express a feeling in an image as intensely as he feels it himself I will show it to the Miskito tomorrow in 1922 my completes his studies at the School of decorative arts and architecture merits asha is a good graphic artist writes the headmaster in his final report but he lacks the right artistic temperament his work is too cerebral neither emotional nor lyrical enough not a cheerful conclusion to go out into the world with especially if you've just heard from your true love but she's not interested in you like oh romantics though ensure fortunately knows where paradise can be found Italy he'd been there with his parents on holiday and was deeply impressed by its natural beauty I should have to stay here for months to understand the passionate rolling hills and rich vegetation he wrote to his friends and on the times in their extravagant Palazzo those and churches mosaics and frescoes I'm indulging so greedy but I fear that my stomach cannot take it and at the end of 1922 strolling through the streets of Sienna he feels that he belongs in Italy and and the if a man's happiness depended on the place he lives in I would stay in Sienna for the rest of my life he acknowledges I pity you northerners and because he's afraid that his mind will not be able to cope with the new atmosphere he now lives in the unexpected surprises an unrivalled mood set this blessed place presenting with every day he draws makes woodcuts and writes one letter after the other his struggle to express ideas in his woodcuts has been for gotten for the next 13 years he mainly feels called upon to record what he sees around him and for a time to wrest it from oblivion he wrestles with little human weaknesses and there are of course times when he is lonely wouldn't it be great if we could talk together again he tells a friend about everyday things about on-demand harlem about the issue have sex about life and about life with a capital L about ruin and damnation laundry room donna is in and so on but in general he's happier than ever from the holiday resort to prevail on the Italian south coast he writes a few months later I'm working hard and that is the main reason for my happiness because gentle nature the warm spring and good lodgings would certainly not be enough to make me happy I've left my wood cutting behind in Sienna my drawing serve only as a diary so that I can look back later and see what I saw here and see better what I see he sometimes become so enthusiastic that he starts singing out loud to the flowers he's drawing and in the hotel guest book he declares that Dutch blood flows only sporadically through his veins due to all kinds of foreign influences apparently he felt a different person and underlined the fact by letting his beard grow and solemnly noting it down in his diary on the memorable day he decides to stop shaving a Swiss girl and her parents arrive in the hotel at the table on which my paper lies Maurits informs his friend in on them is a 25 year old girl she's eating a biscuit at the moment and this moves me deeply because it is hot and she's wearing a sleeveless blouse girls arms always move me profoundly not when they're fat and red but when they're on the thin side and young man innocent and burnt a little by the Sun he resolves not to pursue this Co who so moves in because he knows from experience how unpleasant unrequited love is nevertheless this love turns out to be neutral and soon macao his composing a poem in French about Jeter's hands hands he says %uh the most on his part of the human body they cannot lie as laughing I and the month can when the ohmic a family returns home they continue to write to one another as yet there appears to be no great intimacy it takes and ship four attempts before he's able to bring himself to write dear Jeter but after a year they're increasingly frequent and ever more passionate correspondence leads to marriage the couple moved to Rome as if to record their happiness Asher makes a series of woodcuts about the creation ending with a nadie lick Adam n Eve in the Garden of Eden Asher hardly ever made court reads he didn't feel comfortable when someone post for him but of course that didn't apply to Jeter their house in Rome is enlivened by a silk wall hanging Asher printed himself golden white and black dogs fitting artfully together like a puzzle it's an amusing game that he sometimes indulges in after his Harlem period but they are isolated experiments for his real work he's devoted to doing Italian landscapes each year he takes long hikes to look for subjects for his woodcuts preferably in the most inhospitable the places I'm so sorry we can't go on a spring hike together he writes to one of his friends from his youth it's become my custom to go on a hike every spring refreshing my spirit and body and providing inspiration for the months ahead I know of no greater joy than wandering through the valleys and hills from village to village taking in unbridled nature and enjoying the unexpected and inconceivable which is in the greatest imaginable contrast to day-to-day life at home the most unpleasant things a bed riddled with bugs food often have inferior quality that appears to be not only one of the conditions but rather a part of the pleasure and home in Rome Jeter and Mark leader carefree life unencumbered by the pressures have social status and high society a print like the Tower of Babel seems to be made mainly in order to look down bemused from a great height on the human commotion below I wish to holds no position and nor shall I ever hold one share rights challenging me to one of his successful friends I simply wish for a shop probably a sweet shop my mother will then be able to answer the questions put to her one son is a professor at the University of Leiden and the other has a sweet shop in Rome and I hope on telling this her heart will swell with pride but ashes father who sends his son a monthly allowance notes in his diary that the children have a common to have all fund their own way in the world something to be envious of the ants and his concern only grows when the couple have a son mark rights with delight in amazement in his letter he's an adorable sweet and beautiful child certainly no misfit after a while his lack of income starts to worry even Asha himself now and then a successful commercial venture brings a little relief wrapping paper for example late in his life postage stamps wood panels murals and tablecloths will follow when his son is a little bigger he reads to him and on a couple occasions it even leads to a new print and his main source inspiration however remains Italy and and and home head me and home votes back to be on the vanity to leon salons and yeah got this week to the fella at the sexytime Council on skype in to see them a of saccadic need to see a TI answer last bit of a mean mad them democracy in Florida the brooches da camera vans and salamat about the hotspot day a bus not bring them home yeltsin heat dis it if next met but I guess also the market of Matt's Battle Creek a a happened over hobbled stuffy I and dashing active home of success of Mendoza hankering for sect on dirty if international cities and time to malcolm us mmm don't you do too much at the same thing he was asked in an interview at the time perhaps I do he answered but if something moves me I have to draw it I may sell little but I cannot sit still I've been to places where few strangers if any have ever been one of these places is Kenji where a number a jeering street boys coax him into entering the crypt at the San Nicholas Church in the nation is set in a wall are about a hundred mummified bodies of priests and while the boys throw the hat so the preset one another Asha sketches the remains of what were once people in the final lithograph he leaves out the life story of the priests written in sonnet form and hung in a frame above their heads instead their other words eat a missile est the last sentence if every Mass the rest his silence in Rome one of his old Highland seems returns Asha and his surroundings mirrored in a reflecting Bowl in 1959 he writes about this lithograph and about himself the head of the graphic artist or to be more specific the point between his eyes is at the center whichever way he turns he remains the middle point man's ego is uncompromisingly the center of the world asha is often so involved in his work that Jeter and the children have to eat without him this Ning to the noise that penetrates from his studio the drumming and his nails on the workbench the whistling a Bach melody the city he lives in Rome has never inspired action but when its imposing buildings a spectacular lit up by front lights at night this changes last night the rights to a friend in the Netherlands I made sketches are that amazing and splendid nocturnal Rome whose architecture I love much more than during the daytime if we ever go to room together I'll show you around the Rome I love then we'll walk in this fantastic scenery cleared of people as if in a wonderful dream but this fantastic scenery was licked by the fascist regime for the specific purpose a feeling it with crowds in Asher who once said he didn't want to become an Italian among Italians that he would be satisfied to remain a stranger was no longer able to detach himself from Italian reality his eldest son has to join in March is wearing a fascist uniform it was time after 13 years to me Italy after the family moved to Switzerland Asher looks around him and his heart sinks in the winter of 35 36 he writes later we were in the Swiss mountains in that of all white snowy misery I hate that white shroud that covers the earth his sons were having a wonderful time but where was he to get his inspiration in heaven's name for the first time disheartened he copies someone else's work perhaps it was no accident but it was your own bosses vision have hell all he lay awake at night trying to imagine how he could portray box music graphically he makes one list the graph is immediate surroundings when it's finished he takes a good look at it and is shocked by the pathetic result if that's the best he can do he might as well give up one evening lying awake in bed he hears a switching rustling sound its Jeter putting her hand it reminds him of the sound a boat makes as it cuts through a calm sea he's overcome by a great long sailing on a calm sea on the forward active a ship towards the horizon that continually recedes waking up in a cabin and feeling that you're not lying flat and still but rocking gently these with experiences on his first see journey in 1922 the T now yearns to relive in exchange for some Prince he and Jess are allowed to sail on italian freighters now and then they go ashore for example in desolate Spain where two months later civil war is to break I'll the me a boat journey like this is an oasis of peace he writes shocked after returning to the ship europeans are destined slowly but surely to sink into the morass all their attempts to save themselves of fruitless they sink deeper and deeper it whenever you cast your eye in the world there is nothing but inconsolable misery and the threat of war bankruptcy and revolution is increasing every Wed hope for a better future doesn't exist for the objective and impartial onlooker 0 but it's precisely in that depressing Spain but he finds a source of inspiration that can replace the Italian landscape that would induce him the man who'd had so much trouble drawing things he didn't have in front of him to draw the non-existent world's that would make him famous it was in Spain as he later says that is eyes opened are I'll for days on end Jeter and moderates up busy feverishly copping the geometric motifs if the arabs in the Alhambra the great intricacy and geometric artistry of the pattens had already been noted by Asha in a visit long before but now he obviously sees more in them the pattens make an impression on him of something ancient and eternal each pattern repeats itself endlessly in the kindest two-dimensional you nervous have me but if such a Patton is a unit mass Asher wants to populate it with figures drawn from reality all that's wonderful incomprehensible splendid in chanting surrounding us in the world depends on repetition and multiplication he writes later in a booklet about his theory regular playing Division for we're not deaf blind or dumb where conscious at the shapes that surround us and they only have meaning if we recognize them as clear as symbols of people animals things we see around us capricious patches if abstract geometric figures hold little meaning for us coming home he tries to transform the Arab geometric figures into people seahorses birds he shows his attempts to his brother a geology professor who advises him to read some articles by crystallography this they're involved in the same things as you up head it's a revelation these are people who systematically study the kinds of patterns that entry cash is so much from that moment on he spends year after year filling in one school exercise book after another designing his own Feria regular plane division you mmm by the the the the up until his death he uses his system to arrange an amazing quantity of fish frogs birds and lizards in mosaics the the it shows how fascinated he was by this game with different figures but you can never actually see it the same time because one is the background for the other by the the the the the his studies in plain division are not meant for the general public they only occasionally surface in his official prince the first one is development and quickly followed by day and night them and later it becomes one of his best selling prints in 1938 this couldn't have been predicted friends and acquaintances to whom he shows his new work find it peculiar and don't really know what to make a vid disappointing especially since he spent a whole year experimenting in exploring this new direction and his work %uh fortunately his old teacher de Mesquita is enthusiastic Asha who has moved from Switzerland to Brussels regularly visits in but he doesn't really need any encouragement once his ideal was to master his trade completely he sometimes chose subjects because they lent themselves particularly to a certain technique he wanted to try out now his ideas excited so much that he wants to explain them to others at all costs ideas that can only be expressed in images rather than any words such as the player figures that are each other's background the optimist in the pessimist could never be seen at the same time as long as they are figures in a regularly divided plane you can see I the one or the other but when they emerge from the flat surface we see a black man and a white man shaking each other's hand Asher throws himself into his work more passionately than ever I cannot imagine what my life would have been like if I had not been confronted with the question of plain division he later rights to an admirer I am so to speak head over heels in love and I still don't know why the more fanatically he's absorbed by his work the sadder and lonely a Jeter feels and when the family moved to the crime Dutchtown dove bond at the beginning of the second world war the situation only gets worse he notes s symptoms and his diary with concern but doesn't realize that I isolation could be one of the courses deep down she's been jealous since that time he remembers later it's the one-sided perspective of someone whose work is more important than anything else mmm nevertheless asha is not indifferent to things happening around him he has difficulty concentrating on his graphic work and keeps busy carving a large wooden bowl on which angels and devils literally grow out of each other's background theme mmm since the exclusion of jews I always have an unpleasant feeling when I exhibit my work he writes to a friend a feeling that I'm a kind of profiteer I would much rather stop exhibiting indeed he does stop does not become a member of the nazi's Department of Culture and withdraws his membership at the association of graphic artists he regularly visits his old Jewish teacher de Mesquita sometimes taking a small gift one afternoon when he arrives at the door de Mesquita and his wife and son have been taken away he collects the print spread haphazardly throughout the house one of them trampled by the hub nailed boots so the soldier he carefully keeps for the rest of his life in the final year of the war shall no longer gets around to work I would cut takes more effort than ever my brain seems completely numb he writes to a friend but expresses astonishment to the same friends just after the war that all of a sudden there is demand for his work I cannot tell you how encouraging it is but I've been able to make a living from my work for the last two months it's the first time in my life this has happened almost 10 years pass before that happens again by making all those prints with figures stepping out of a flat surface into the world Asher apparently becomes aware of what a strange phenomenon that is a three dimensional drawing he'd always had a preference for unusual often high perspectives and for reflective bowls with distortion but now his astonishment in the reproduction of perspective becomes a separate thing the isn't it absurd to draw a few lines and then call it a house he wonders and he distorts the special allusion by suggesting a strange bump in the paper which of course is also an illusion oh he combines various perspectives in one drawing from it's a productive period with a high output in which he also finds time to experiment with a new technique the mezzotint is a laborious procedure which makes velvety dark grey and black tints possible but after three years experimenting he gives it up again because he says it takes too much time and effort from someone who rightfully or wrongly believes he has no time to waste the fear of wasting time urges him back to the discipline at his studio everyday after a two hour walk in the woods this gives in the peace of mind he needs to be able to think about new work and for the first time since Italy he sees things around him that appear to be worth using in a print it's not the romantic picture of the woods that intrigue session but rather the distortion of perspective by a ripple all the possibility of naturally incorporating more than one perspective in a print he can no longer complain about lack of attention time & Life magazine devote long articles to him and an exhibition of his work is organized in Amsterdam state lic museum for an international conference mathematicians he also gives a lecture after that he keeps in touch with the number of scientists over the years some other make suggestions for Prince such as the concave and convex where shapes and lines are used that appear on the one hand to emerge and can on the other actually be seen as depth on these contacts with scientists lead to many misunderstandings later on I'm not a teacher of mathematics he writes somewhere annoyed I just want to cause a stir and he tries to do that in a way that doesn't require long-winded explanation can you imagine he writes in the same letter that I spent more than a month thinking about to print like concave and convex because everything I conceived was so difficult to grasp asha is amazed by the world around him and tries to discover exactly what he sees and why in his view that's the only similarity between him and various scientists Jeter is not well the man when she's admitted to a sanatorium share rights helplessly I'm a graphic artist and apparently that's all I am because I can't help Jeter good the about the lithograph bombed in which we can recognize Jeter and moderates he writes like an endless bombed even their foreheads woven together they form an inseparable entity but he also writes whether these two are planned to be banned so family together I cannot tell it's a perilous undertaking and they look a little said do you have Eric from talks states and in on a blunt sitting there for you meet Lisa vermin yeah back on I yes def men do not that and I'll that but carrie Anne to head this also this the eddyville extolling the start on the email for up to that might affect that matter how did not do you agree about don't know my hand I'm and and criticism cell phone number with finding and and the unique content between chemical that Mikey going to have a feeling of you who know Maycock I some state ID doesn't and so on descend olive oil billions of itself and ashes on being a on the names at home but I it's a dumb vanya height of a doer this whole night under the sea a hope that a home at something and I'll over for Jessica before from also look to set up some you meet us in fact that I'm able person is also hospital what for me the dude my this at all angela is a true homes on being in puppy at the Mackinac TK marginally more traffic is bad you know that and banned from Micah dumb thank you have a good abkhazian days in the film at Soho tisch latter that all school possible means that a and and so a funhouse love about for market the the styling is to create some the house and I have a kind of a donde remain salome a couple to and and therefore formal the figure air stick at Deakin the that tossing them into and ben Shahn sukha of domestic routes and CSR folder help samatha apt a.m. how t-shirt a.m. for vapid the high enough netcom have gone about so that they can about this him on it so much that this ethnic a mechanical on the way home at active and that dumb the house I have ever felt sexy bill the house ability not me I'd be a day filled over name and mister more yet but Korea on this colony don't like my fan doesn't stick motorists that I kidding saying I mean I had a funny haha can't from share gains new admirers the well in Prince like waterfall in which an amazed Asher shows the absurdities that can be put on paper with perspective they find a kindred spirit they to experiment with perception you can see that Asha smokes pot someone writes the 0 the new but asha is not much impressed by the sixties generation the Beatles and many other recent people like phenomena he writes to his son was emigrated are disturbing there is something wildly revolutionary in the air your children may see a lot of changes and then it will be a good thing that they live in the expansive a sparsely populated countries such as Canada because mark my words this is only the beginning at the world is going to free itself from pole to booze the man that once said i tryin my prints to convince people that we live in a clean orderly world and not in an unrelated chaos now writes to a friend it's a pity that the world we live in is such a hopeless case it's an unfathomable while dangerous world an irrational gamble I myself prefer to live amongst obstructions that have nothing to do with reality he's convinced that no one will understand his series circa limits that he's so enthusiastic about it's the eternity of the universe captured in a circle the figures multiply endlessly but never reach the edge in the circle I'm he enjoys his work just as much as he used to but he is tortured by fears he never had before a disease makes everything he does more and more difficult and he and Jeter become a strange for good what do you do with someone who is Board she should just pull herself together done it he writes and she complains to an acquaintance always that black and white I can't take it anymore finally she leaves the going to a son in Switzerland where she comes back to life a little 0 the last images we have a Fisher are not gloomy we see an old man in his studio doing the things he enjoys complaining about everyone who nags in to make reprint surveilled work but in fact he's proud of his success and gives lectures on his work on the door of his materials covered there a photograph is old teacher de Mesquita and have the South Italian coast where the Sun always shown

Channel: Visual Impact Systems - Advertising and Marketing

Views: 229,106

Rating: 4.8966665 out of 5

Keywords: M.C. Escher, Documentary, CINEMEDIA, NPS, Radio Netherlands Television, RNTV

Id: g4VAxilTRGs

Length: 59min 35sec (3575 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 22 2013

Reddit Comments

[u/Sir-Rein]

Really enjoyed this docu! Thanks for posting.

[u/Geoffles]

Absolutely top-notch.

[u/blaou]

Nice one!