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There are numerous references to Dutch painter M.C. Escher in popular culture.
| | This article needs additional citations for verification .(December 2010) |
There are numerous references to Dutch painter M.C. Escher in popular culture.
In Dario Argento's 1977 film Suspiria , Escher's art is painted on several walls, as well as the main location of the film being on the fictitious "Escherstrasse", an obvious nod to the artist.
Jim Henson's 1986 fantasy film Labyrinth features a room based on the painting Relativity. [1]
The slasher film A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child (1989) features a pastiche of House of Stairs or Relativity conjured up by Freddy Krueger in his dream dimension, [2] referred to in the script as the "Escher Maze", where it is described as "an Escheresque, expressionistic landscape" and "an insane, logic-defying world where water runs uphill and stairs and doors stand at impossible angles to one another." [3]
The idea of Shahram Mokri's 2013 film Fish & Cat was inspired by Escher's paintings. [4] The director gives a change in the perspective of time in one single shot.
In Night at the Museum: Secret of the Tomb (2014), Sir Lancelot, Teddy Roosevelt, and Larry Daley enter the painting Relativity, and experience the same strange gravity featured in the painting. [5]
In the 2024 horror film Imaginary , the world of imagination – known as the Never-Ever – where the demon lures the protagonists resembles Relativity.
The Captain Future anime series features a variation of Escher's Relativity in its 40th episode "Nightmare World: 4th Dimension" (悪夢の世界・四次元; Akumu no sekai shi-jigen) as the home dimension of alien energy creatures.
The Comedy Central animated series Drawn Together has a first-season episode, "Clara's Dirty Little Secret", where Clara believes she is pregnant, and Toot suggests that she fall down some stairs. Clara thinks of a suitable room and leads them to the "M. C. Escher room", where Toot pushes Clara down (and up, around and back down) a flight of stairs.
The FOX animated series Family Guy has alluded to Escher on three occasions. In "Brian Goes Back to College", Stewie and Brian share a room where Stewie puts up a framed print of Relativity, which he calls "Crazy Stairs". He then breaks it while playing Ultimate Frisbee and asks "Oh no, did that hit crazy stairs?" A later episode, "No Meals on Wheels", features Peter complaining that the fact that his new restaurant is attracting paraplegics "is weirder than that rap video by M.C. Escher". Escher is then depicted inside Relativity dressed like MC Hammer in "U Can't Touch This"[ citation needed ] and rapping, "Going up the stairs and going down the stairs and going up the stairs and going down the stairs and going up the sideways stairs."
In another episode Stewie tells Brian he makes "less sense than M.C. Escher’s floor plan", and then the episode shows the constructor complaining the architect Escher that he cannot put six stairways "all in one spot" and because of that workers are quitting.
In the Teen Titans first season episode "Mad Mod", its eponymous villain traps the Titans in an illusionary setting based on Escher's works.
On the Syfy sci-fi series Warehouse 13 , Escher is said by Leena to be one of the architects, along with Thomas Edison and Nikola Tesla, who designed the Warehouse. The Escher Vault's design resembles the lithograph Relativity. Inside this vault, the stairwells and walls are constantly moving. Anyone not wearing specially designed glasses run the risk of being lost forever once inside. H. G. Wells is the only known individual to have successfully navigated the Escher Vault without glasses, instead using her Inperceptor Vest to retrieve personal items stored within.
In the Star vs. the Forces of Evil episode "Interdimensional Field Trip", Sabrina, the classmate of Star falls in a construction similar to Relativity.
The Rick and Morty episode "Morty's Mind Blowers" opens with the titular characters fleeing from a humanoid creature set in a place similar to Relativity.
The opening to The Addams Family animated series involves a visual based off of Escher's Relativity
The Futurama episode "I, Roommate" features Relativity as one of the living spaces Fry and Bender are considering living in.
Escher is alluded to in the Phineas and Ferb episode "Gaming the System" in which Candace is found in an environment similar to Relativity.
The Final Space episode "Chapter Three" features a construct alluding to Escher.
The opening to the anime Go! Go! Loser Ranger! includes visuals heavily based on Escher's Relativity.
In Yu-Gi-Oh! , Yami Yugi's mind in the Millenium Puzzle is represented as a construction similar to Relativity, to emphasize the confusion he feels about who he is.
In the anime Ronin Warriors, the inside of Lord Arago's castle in the Netherworld resembles Escher's Relativity yet in a more Japanese design.
Hwang Dong-hyuk, director of Squid Game, said in an interview with Netflix that the set's maze-like corridors and stairs were inspired by M.C. Escher's Relativity. [6] [7] [8]
In Transformers: Cyberverse , "the End of the Universe part 2" Optimus, Bumblebee and Wheeljack get stranded in a dimension with infinite stairs connecting to each other defying the laws of gravity. The space is an allusion to the impossible object thematic of Escher.
In the city building game Afterlife , Hell's ultimate punishment for Envy is called the Escher pit and is designed to torture souls by having them all be given different punishments, and after a few days are allowed to switch with a neighbor, thinking he / she is better off, only to find that all punishments are worse than the last. The outside slightly resembles Relativity.
In Final Fantasy IX, the third-disc dungeon Ipsen's Castle is modeled after the painting, featuring an array of inverted ladders and stairs.
In AdventureQuest Worlds , the first lord of chaos is Escherion, who has the ability to invert objects and lives in a castle with an inside similar to "Relativity".
In the Psygnosis game Lemmings , the 18th level of "Taxing" is named "Tribute to M.C. Escher", as the solution involves building a zigzag stairway slightly reminiscent of Relativity.
In God of War III , 'Hera's Garden' is an Escher inspired puzzle in which the player must manipulate various objects and the camera perspective to guide protagonist Kratos to the exit.
In Knock-Knock game, one of fragments of reality is a reference to Escher's work.
During the last decades several video games have been released, some of which are more or less inspired by the art of M.C. Escher, such as Monument Valley. Some games borrow the graphical art style; some games contain game mechanics that are heavily influenced by the artist while others are simply put tributes to the works of M.C. Escher. [9]
The cover of Mike Oldfield's Boxed (1976) mimics two of Escher's works: "Gallery" and "Other World". [10] [11]
The cover of British band Mott the Hoople's self-titled debut album features a colorized reproduction of Escher's lithograph Reptiles.
American rock band Chagall Guevara recorded the song "Escher's World" from their 1991 eponymous album.
In the video "Around the World" (1997) of Daft Punk, men and women, dressed like mummies similar to those in Escher's painting, perpetually walk around on a stair.
"Escher", a song on Teenage Fanclub's album Thirteen , with lyrics that deal with disorientation.
The song "Mansion Party" by Ninja Sex Party features the line "Take an upside-down left at the M.C. Escher Stairs" and the song's animated music video shows a scene similar to that of Relativity.
In the song "White and Nerdy" by "Weird Al" Yankovic, he says "M.C. Escher, that's my favorite M.C."
American jazz saxophonist Michael Brecker has recorded a composition entitled "Escher Sketch (A Tale of Two Rhythms)". The album that features it, "Now You See It… (Now You Don't)", also has M.C.Escher's artwork on the cover.
Graham Waterhouse composed Perplexities after Escher for heckelphone, string quartet and double bass, based on five graphic artworks by Escher.
Andrew Lipson created a Lego version of Relativity. [12]
In 1981, Austria issued a postage stamp featuring Escher's Impossible Dice Construction [13] and a 1998 Netherlands stamp illustrated a portrait of the artist alongside one of his works. [14] [13]
In 1993, in the manga Berserk by Kentaro Miura, during the Black Swordsman arc, the first appearance of the astral plane is shown as a surreal labyrinth dimension that mixes surreal geometry with a dark atmosphere.
In 2007, a Relativity inspired "Endless Staircase" room was added to Walt Disney World's Haunted Mansion attraction.
In 2017, four combs and 244 steps from old wooden-stepped escalators at Wynyard railway station, Sydney, Australia, were "refashioned into a soaring crisscrossing tangle reminiscent of an Escher puzzle" named 'Interloop', designed by local artist Chris Fox and hanging from a ceiling above one of the new sets of escalators. [15] [16] [17]
The 1982 Doctor Who episode "Castrovalva" borrows its title from Escher's early lithograph of the same name, though Escher's view of Castrovalva has none of the paradoxical elements of his later works to which the setting of the episode could more readily be compared. [18]
Sheila Chandra included a piece called "Escher's Triangle" on her CD Roots and Wings – the title refers to Escher's use of the Penrose triangle in pictures like Waterfall .
A comic crossover between Mike Allred's Madman and Bernie Mireault's The Jam, features Escher as a central character when the two characters enter into an alternate universe created by a somewhat godlike Escher, based on many of his works. [19]
In 2006, Audi released a commercial with many Escher-inspired scenes. [20]
The bonus stages of the first Sonic the Hedgehog game, for the Sega Genesis/Mega Drive, feature an animated background of birds turning into fish, a reference to Sky and Water I . [21] Monument Valley and its sequel features puzzles loosely based on Escher's works. [22] [23]
In The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess , the Oocca are modeled after the bird creatures seen in Another World, with the City in the Sky dungeon having some of them walking on walls like the birds in the painting.
The 1995 animated film The Thief and the Cobbler features a chase sequence taking place within set pieces loosely based on Escher's works. [24] In Christopher Nolan's 2010 film Inception , Arthur demonstrates to Ariadne how to make unbreakable mental mazes by constructing infinite structures. He points out that during their long conversation, they have been traversing the same single flight of stairs, and the camera pans out to show a staircase similar to Escher's Ascending and Descending .
In 2016, in The Hidden Oracle , the first book of the series The Trials of Apollo by Rick Riordan, Apollo notes that the paintings on the walls of the cave of the pythia Rachel resemble Escher's work.
Maurits Cornelis Escher was a Dutch graphic artist who made woodcuts, lithographs, and mezzotints, many of which were inspired by mathematics. Despite wide popular interest, for most of his life Escher was neglected in the art world, even in his native Netherlands. He was 70 before a retrospective exhibition was held. In the late twentieth century, he became more widely appreciated, and in the twenty-first century he has been celebrated in exhibitions around the world.
An impossible object is a type of optical illusion that consists of a two-dimensional figure which is instantly and naturally understood as representing a projection of a three-dimensional object but cannot exist as a solid object. Impossible objects are of interest to psychologists, mathematicians and artists without falling entirely into any one discipline.
Voltron is an American animated television series franchise that features a team of space explorers who pilot a giant super robot known as "Voltron". Produced by Peter Keefe and Ted Koplar through his production company World Events Productions, Voltron was an adaptation of several Japanese anime television series from Toei Animation. The original television series aired in syndication from September 10, 1984, to November 18, 1985. The first season of Voltron, featuring the "Lion Force Voltron", was adapted from the series Beast King GoLion. The second season, featuring the "Vehicle Team Voltron", was adapted from the unrelated series Armored Fleet Dairugger XV.
A Nightmare on Elm Street is an American supernatural slasher media franchise consisting of nine films, a television series, novels, comic books, and various other media. The franchise began with the film A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984), written and directed by Wes Craven. The overall plot of the franchise centers around the fictional character Freddy Krueger, the apparition of a former child killer who was burned alive by the vengeful parents of his victims, who returns from the grave to terrorize and kill the teenage residents of the fictional Springwood, Ohio in their dreams. Craven returned to the franchise to co-script the second sequel, A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors (1987), and to write and direct Wes Craven's New Nightmare (1994). The films collectively grossed $472 million at the box office worldwide.
Freddy Krueger is a fictional character and the antagonist of the A Nightmare on Elm Street horror film franchise. Created by Wes Craven, he made his debut in Craven's A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) as the malevolent spirit of a child killer who had been burned to death by his victims' parents after evading prison. Krueger goes on to murder his victims in their dreams, causing their deaths in the real world as well. In the dream world, he is a powerful force and seemingly invulnerable. However, whenever Freddy is pulled back into the real world, he has normal human vulnerabilities and can be destroyed. He is commonly identified by his burned, disfigured face, dirty red-and-green-striped sweater and brown fedora, and trademark metal-clawed, brown leather, right hand glove. This glove was the product of Krueger's own imagination, having welded the blades himself before using it to murder many of his victims, both in the real and dream worlds. Over the course of the film series, Freddy has battled several reoccurring survivors including Nancy Thompson and Alice Johnson. The character was consistently portrayed by Robert Englund in the original film series as well as in the television spin-off Freddy's Nightmares. The reboot portrays him as an undead groundskeeper accused of molesting the students.
The Penrose stairs or Penrose steps, also dubbed the impossible staircase, is an impossible object created by Oscar Reutersvärd in 1937 and later independently discovered and made popular by Lionel Penrose and his son Roger Penrose. A variation on the Penrose triangle, it is a two-dimensional depiction of a staircase in which the stairs make four 90-degree turns as they ascend or descend yet form a continuous loop, so that a person could climb them forever and never get any higher. This is clearly impossible in three-dimensional Euclidean geometry but possible in some non-Euclidean geometry like in nil geometry.
Dream art is any form of art that is directly based on a material from one's dreams, or a material that resembles dreams, but not directly based on them.
Waterfall is a lithograph by the Dutch artist M. C. Escher, first printed in October 1961. It shows a perpetual motion machine where water from the base of a waterfall appears to run downhill along the water path before reaching the top of the waterfall.
Clarence John Brown III is an American actor. Prolific in film and television since the 1980s, Brown is often cast in villainous and authoritative roles.
"Treehouse of Horror VI" is the sixth episode of the seventh season of the American animated television series The Simpsons, and the sixth episode in the Treehouse of Horror series. It first aired on Fox in the United States on October 29, 1995, and contains three self-contained segments. In "Attack of the 50-Foot Eyesores", an ionic storm brings Springfield's oversized advertisements and billboards to life and they begin attacking the town. The second segment, "Nightmare on Evergreen Terrace", is a parody of the A Nightmare on Elm Street film series, in which Groundskeeper Willie attacks schoolchildren in their sleep. In the third and final segment, "Homer3", Homer finds himself trapped in a three-dimensional world, Earth. It was inspired by the 1962 The Twilight Zone episode "Little Girl Lost". The episode was written by John Swartzwelder, Steve Tompkins, and David X. Cohen and was directed by Bob Anderson.
Castrovalva is the first serial of the 19th season of the British science fiction television series Doctor Who, which was first broadcast in four twice-weekly parts on BBC1 from 4 to 12 January 1982. It was the first full serial to feature Peter Davison as the Fifth Doctor. The title is a reference to the lithograph Castrovalva by M. C. Escher, which depicts the town Castrovalva in the Abruzzo region, Italy.
"Mind Over Murder" is the fourth episode of the first season of the animated comedy series Family Guy. It originally aired on Fox in the United States on April 25, 1999. The episode features Peter after he is placed under house arrest, and decides to open his own bar in the family's basement. The bar immediately becomes a success among Peter's male friends when his wife, Lois, begins to sing and dance in front of them while wearing revealing clothing. Meanwhile, Stewie attempts to create a time travel device in order to escape the pain of teething.
Lewis Carroll's books Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865) and Through the Looking-Glass (1871) have been highly popular in their original forms, and have served as the basis for many subsequent works since they were published. They have been adapted directly into other media, their characters and situations have been appropriated into other works, and these elements have been referenced innumerable times as familiar elements of shared culture. Simple references to the two books are too numerous to list; this list of works based on Alice in Wonderland focuses on works based specifically and substantially on Carroll's two books about the character of Alice.
Chess became a source of inspiration in the arts in literature soon after the spread of the game to the Arab World and Europe in the Middle Ages. The earliest works of art centered on the game are miniatures in medieval manuscripts, as well as poems, which were often created with the purpose of describing the rules. After chess gained popularity in the 15th and 16th centuries, many works of art related to the game were created. One of the best-known, Marco Girolamo Vida's poem Scacchia ludus, written in 1527, made such an impression on the readers that it singlehandedly inspired other authors to create poems about chess.
Wayside is a Canadian animated sitcom developed by John Derevlany and produced by Nelvana Limited. The series follows Todd, a transfer student who attends Wayside, an offbeat 30-story grammar school. It is loosely based on the Wayside School books by Louis Sachar, and several elements differ between the two works.
Rabbit Rampage is a 1955 Warner Bros. Looney Tunes animated cartoon, directed by Chuck Jones. The short was released on June 11, 1955, and stars Bugs Bunny.
"Road to Germany" is the third episode of the seventh season of the American animated television series Family Guy. It originally aired on the Fox network in the United States on October 19, 2008. In the episode, Mort accidentally enters Stewie's time machine and is sent to Warsaw, Poland, on September 1, 1939. Brian and Stewie realize Mort has gone back in time, and use the time machine to save him.
"Road to the Multiverse" is the first episode of the eighth season of the animated comedy series Family Guy. Directed by Greg Colton and written by Wellesley Wild, the episode originally aired on Fox in the United States on September 27, 2009, along with the series premiere of The Cleveland Show. In "Road to the Multiverse", two of the show's main characters, baby genius Stewie and anthropomorphic dog Brian, both voiced by series creator Seth MacFarlane, use an "out-of-this-world" remote control to travel through a series of parallel universes. They eventually end up in a world where dogs rule and humans obey. Brian becomes reluctant to return to his own universe, and he ultimately ends up breaking the remote, much to the dismay of Stewie, who soon seeks a replacement. The "Road to" episodes which have aired throughout various seasons of Family Guy were inspired by the Road to ... comedy films starring Bing Crosby, Bob Hope and Dorothy Lamour, though this episode was not originally conceived as a "Road to" show.
Cephalopods, usually specifically octopuses, squids, nautiluses and cuttlefishes, are most commonly represented in popular culture in the Western world as creatures that spray ink and use their tentacles to persistently grasp at and hold onto objects or living creatures.
"Go, Stewie, Go!" is the 13th episode of the eighth season of the animated comedy series Family Guy. It originally aired on Fox in the United States on March 14, 2010. The episode features Stewie after he auditions, cross-dressed under the pseudonym Karina Smirnoff, for a female role in the American version of Jolly Farm Revue, and eventually ends up falling in love with a female co-star on the show. Meanwhile, Lois finds herself attracted to Meg's surprisingly normal boyfriend, after she is asked by Peter to realize her advancing age.
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