“I try in my prints to testify that we live in a beautiful and orderly world, and not in a formless chaos, as it sometimes seems.”
—M. C. Escher M. C. Escher’s 1947 Other World presents an extraordinary intergalactic vision through the perspective of mathematically impossible architecture. On a cratered planet we see distant nebula and the rings of Saturn populating the deep space observed through perfectly constructed interlocking arches and columns that follow strict linear perspective. However, it is impossible to tell where one arch begins and ends as the viewpoint is suddenly inversed, wrapped in a vortex of amalgamating geometric shapes. Upon each mezzanine is a motif that features in several of Escher’s earlier works: the Simurgh. Appearing as a central component of the 1943 scratch drawing Still Life, Escher was gifted a Simurgh figurine from his father-in-law, held in his collection as a treasured gift from Azerbaijan. A creature from Middle Eastern mythology akin to the Western phoenix, the anthropomorphic bird was believed to have witnessed the destruction of the world three times over, appearing every five hundred years to be reborn again from ashes. In a mathematically infinite setting of ever-expanding space, it is not beyond the realm of possibility to imagine the immortal creature as a guardian of the gateway to Escher’s cosmic other world.

Born in Friesland, the Netherlands, in 1898, Escher studied at the School for Architecture and Decorative Arts in Haarlem – having failed all his school exams except mathematics – but later abandoned the venture in pursuit of graphic art. The decision was supported by his influential teacher Samuel Jessurun de Mesquita, whose decorative style and amorous relationship with woodcut print influenced Escher’s emerging interest in the medium. Characterised by clear lines, simplicity in contrasting solid forms and always geometrically absolute, Escher later admitted his affinity to art was additionally guided by the fact that, in his opinion, the buildings and landscape of his successive Swiss and Flemish homes were rather mundane. Rejecting the outside world for increasing introspection, he “felt compelled to withdraw from the more or less direct and true-to-life illustrating of my surroundings”, embracing what he called his “inner visions.”

M.C. Escher, 1971. Image: Hans Peters / Anefo / National Archives, The Hague

Created in 1947, Other World is both logically perfect and irrational, reflecting metaphorically the cultural consciousness in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War. When Escher returned from his extensive travels back to Holland in 1941, his home country would have appeared familiar yet distant, ravaged by the physical and psychological destruction of the war. Looking out of his window upon a once familiar scene that was now warped, Other World reflects the artist’s mental unease fueled by the fact that his former friend and teacher de Mesquita – of Jewish heritage – was captured by the Nazis a year before the war’s end.
“A graphic artist essentially has something of a troubadour; he sings and repeats the same song in every print he makes form the same woodblock, copper plate or lithographic stone.”
—M. C. Escher Other World foretells Escher’s later Impossible Constructions, a collection of prints that augment, to an almost absurdist extent, the artist’s fascination with mathematical paradoxes and their potential for optical illusion. Ascending and Descending of 1960 draws on the idea of inverting functional space to create a never ending staircase depicted from an impossible vantage point. The uniform figures are infinitely bound to a continuous circle of steps, gaining no physical distance, going neither up nor down. In a 1963 lecture Escher declared: “If you want to express something impossible, you must keep to certain rules. The element of mystery to which you want to draw attention should be surrounded and veiled by a quite obvious, readily recognisable commonness.” Epitomising Escher’s geometric sorcery, his indefatigable endeavour into the orderly extraordinary explores the passing of time and boundless space, an infinite preoccupation that Escher, given another chance, “could fill an entire second life with working on prints.”
- Literature
  Flip H. Bool 348

140

M.C. Escher

Other World (B. 348)

1947
Wood engraving and woodcut in colours, on thin Japan paper, with margins.
I. 31.8 x 26.1 cm (12 1/2 x 10 1/4 in.)
S. 39 x 33 cm (15 3/8 x 12 7/8 in.)
Signed and annotated 'eigen druk' (self-printed) in pencil, from the edition of unknown size, framed.

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Sold for £19,050

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