El espejo mágico de M.C. Escher

<p>“A woman once rang me up and said, ‘Mr. Escher, I am absolutely crazy about your work. In your print <em>Reptiles</em>, you have given such a striking illustration of reincarnation.’ I replied, ‘Madame, if that’s the way you see it, so be it.’” A fittingly sly comment from renowned Dutch graphic artist <strong>Maurits Cornelis Escher</strong> (1898–1972), whose complex and ambiguous drawings continue to leave hasty interpretations far behind.<br /><br /> Long before the first computer-generated 3-D images, Escher was <strong>a master of the third dimension</strong>. His lithograph <em>Magic Mirror </em>dates as far back as 1946. By taking such a title for the book, mathematician Bruno Ernst stressed the enrapturing spell Escher’s work invariably casts on those who see it. Ernst visited Escher every week for a year, systematically talking through his entire oeuvre with him. Their discussions resulted in <strong>a friendship that gave Ernst intimate access to the life and conceptual world of Escher</strong>. Ernst’s account was meticulously scrutinized and made accurate by the artist himself.<br /><br /> Escher’s work refuses to be pigeonholed. Scientific, psychological, or aesthetic criteria alone cannot do it justice. The questions remain: Why did he create the pictures? How did he construct them? What preliminary studies were necessary before achieving the final version? And how are his various creations interrelated? This <strong>updated and redesigned edition of a true classic</strong>—complete with <strong>biographical data</strong>, <strong>250 illustrations</strong>, and <strong>a thorough breaking-down of each mathematical problem</strong>—offers answers to these and many other lingering mysteries, and is an <strong>authentic source text</strong> of the first order.</p>