Discover Benelux | The Hague | City Centre Highlights
tantalising tessellations are mounted on a large cylinder, allowing you to walk around it and fully experience the surreal artwork.
leave feeling indifferent. Escher succeeds in drawing us into his world, making us contemplate time, movement and space, like we very rarely do.
Also famous is Escher’s self-portrait, Hand with Reflecting Sphere. I see an old man in a room, books on a shelves behind him and furniture at the back, all malformed by the spherical reflection. The man’s hand is reaching out towards the viewer until it touches the edge of the sphere where it touches another hand, which holds it up. It is a masterpiece of delicacy and precision, depth and reflection and would have certainly blown the minds of Dutch masters such as Vermeer whose portraits also adorn The Hague.
As I was writing this, I considered the discovery of the 15th type of convex monohedral pentagonal tiling – a mathematical finding of a new type of convex pentagon (a shape with five outward corners) where a single tile of which can fill the plane without gaps or overlaps. There are only 15 of them. One can bet this would have inspired Escher and it certainly proves the new proclivity that he has triggered in me.
A new outlook Escher was a very prolific artist. He strived to make his art accessible by democratising it. Instead of making a single artwork like painters do, Escher produced series of his prints, allowing more people to enjoy his work. The museum is paying him homage by letting the visitors experiment with the concepts he worked on. On the first floor, people can reproduce Escher’s self-portrait, using a reflecting object similar to the one on the drawing. In the House of Escher, a room dedicated to optical illusions, I had some fun taking pictures with colleagues: stand on the right and you will look like a giant, then move on the left and you look very tiny. It’s all about playing with perspectives. Aside from the fun elements that can be explored at the museum, one does not 40 | Issue 33 | September 2016
TOP LEFT: Esther’s Metamorphosis II displayed cylinder for the viewer. TOP RIGHT: in the back Esther’s autoportrait in spherical mirror, in the front a light piece by Hans Van Bentern in tribute to Escher. RIGHT: Try and create an optical illusion like Escher. Below: Escher’s drawing animated in 3D.