Print Gallery (Dutch : Prentententoonstelling) is a lithograph printed in 1956 by the Dutch artist M. C. Escher. It depicts a man in a gallery viewing a print of a seaport, and among the buildings in the seaport is the very gallery in which he is standing, making use of the Droste effect with visual recursion. [1] The lithograph has attracted discussion in both mathematical and artistic contexts. Escher considered Print Gallery to be among the best of his works. [2]
Bruno Ernst cites M. C. Escher as stating that he began Print Gallery "from the idea that it must be possible to make an annular bulge, a cyclic expansion ... without beginning or end." [3] Escher attempted to do this with straight lines, but intuitively switched to using curved lines which make the grid expand greatly as it rotates. [3] [4]
In his book Gödel, Escher, Bach , Douglas Hofstadter explains the seeming paradox embodied in Print Gallery as a strange loop showing three kinds of "in-ness": the gallery is physically in the town ("inclusion"); the town is artistically in the picture ("depiction"); the picture is mentally in the person ("representation"). [5]
Escher's signature is on a circular void in the center of the work. In 2003, two Dutch mathematicians, Bart de Smit and Hendrik Lenstra, reported a way of filling in the void by treating the work as drawn on an elliptic curve over the field of complex numbers. They deem an idealized version of Print Gallery to contain a copy of itself (the Droste effect), rotated clockwise by about 157.63 degrees and shrunk by a factor of about 22.58. [4] Their website further explores the mathematical structure of the picture. [6]
Print Gallery has been discussed in relation to post-modernism by a number of writers, including Silvio Gaggi, [7] Barbara Freedman, [8] Stephen Bretzius, [9] and Marie-Laure Ryan. [10]
Maurits Cornelis Escher was a Dutch graphic artist who made mathematically inspired woodcuts, lithographs, and mezzotints. Despite wide popular interest, Escher was for most of his life 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 across the world.
Atrani, Coast of Amalfi is a lithograph print by the Dutch artist M. C. Escher, first printed in August 1931. Atrani is a small town and commune on the Amalfi Coast in the province of Salerno in the Campania region of south-western Italy. Atrani is the second smallest town in Italy and was built right at the edge of the sea. This image of Atrani recurs several times in Escher's work, most notably in his series of Metamorphosis prints: Metamorphosis I, II and III.
Hand with Reflecting Sphere also known as Self-Portrait in Spherical Mirror is a lithograph by Dutch artist M. C. Escher, first printed in January 1935. The piece depicts a hand holding a reflective sphere. In the reflection, most of the room around Escher can be seen, and the hand holding the sphere is revealed to be Escher's.
Reptiles is a lithograph print by the Dutch artist M. C. Escher first printed in March 1943. It touches on the theme found in much of his work of mathematics in art.
Another World II, also known as Other World II, is a woodcut print by the Dutch artist M. C. Escher first printed in January 1947.
House of Stairs is a lithograph print by the Dutch artist M. C. Escher first printed in November 1951. This print measures 47 cm × 24 cm. It depicts the interior of a tall structure crisscrossed with stairs and doorways.
Relativity is a lithograph print by the Dutch artist M. C. Escher, first printed in December 1953. The first version of this work was a woodcut made by earlier that same year.
Three Worlds is a lithograph print by the Dutch artist M. C. Escher first printed in December 1955.
Belvedere is a lithograph print by the Dutch artist M. C. Escher, first printed in May 1958. It shows a plausible-looking belvedere building that is an impossible object, modelled after an impossible cube.
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.
In Western art history, mise en abyme is a formal technique of placing a copy of an image within itself, often in a way that suggests an infinitely recurring sequence. In film theory and literary theory, it refers to the technique of inserting a story within a story. The term is derived from heraldry and literally means "placed into abyss". It was first appropriated for modern criticism by the French author André Gide.
Stars is a wood engraving print created by the Dutch artist M. C. Escher in 1948, depicting two chameleons in a polyhedral cage floating through space.
The Droste effect, known in art as an example of mise en abyme, is the effect of a picture recursively appearing within itself, in a place where a similar picture would realistically be expected to appear, producing a loop which theoretically could go on forever, but realistically only goes on as far as the image's resolution allows.
Hendrik Willem Lenstra Jr. is a Dutch mathematician.
Ascending and Descending is a lithograph print by the Dutch artist M. C. Escher first printed in March 1960.
Arjen Klaas Lenstra is a Dutch mathematician, cryptographer and computational number theorist. He is currently a professor at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) where he heads of the Laboratory for Cryptologic Algorithms.
Mathematics and art are related in a variety of ways. Mathematics has itself been described as an art motivated by beauty. Mathematics can be discerned in arts such as music, dance, painting, architecture, sculpture, and textiles. This article focuses, however, on mathematics in the visual arts.
Still Life with Mirror is a lithograph by the Dutch artist M. C. Escher which was created in 1934. The reflection of the mirror mingles together two completely unrelated spaces and introduces the outside world of the small town narrow street in Abruzzi, Villalago, into internal world of the bedroom. This work of Escher is closely related to his later application of mirror effect in 1937 Still Life and Street. Escher manipulates the scale in different parts of the print to achieve the effect of smooth connection between worlds.
Circle Limit III is a woodcut made in 1959 by Dutch artist M. C. Escher, in which "strings of fish shoot up like rockets from infinitely far away" and then "fall back again whence they came".
Dragon is a wood engraving print created by Dutch artist M. C. Escher in April 1952, depicting a folded paper dragon perched on a pile of crystals. It is part of a sequence of images by Escher depicting objects of ambiguous dimension, including also Three Spheres I, Doric Columns, Drawing Hands and Print Gallery.
