The Study Of Escher’s Art Of Illusion

Maurits Cornelis Escher (1898-1972) is one of the greatest artists in the first halfof the20th century in Holland. His works are calm, wise and full of illusion whichconfuse critics, thus he is regarded as “a hard-classified artist”. He considered thatthere exists the contradiction between two-dimension and three-dimension in everytwo-dimension presentation, so painting is to create illusion through viewers’imagination. Visual psychologists think the creation of illusion in art depends on theprojection of the viewer’s knowledge and experience, that is to say, when watching apicture, viewers seek orderly meaning from a mass of disordered shape and color, andthey will set the picture, once a consistent explanation is found. Escher has a clearunderstand of this point. In order to hinder viewers from finding a consistentexplanation, he deliberately constructed contradiction clues in the picture to createimages that cannot exist in reality through rebelling against and inheriting thetraditional mode. His illusion of art is never for portraying beautiful things, butshowing the essence of painting. Escher attempted to get rid of the shackles ofreproduction nature of painting, and expand the performance of painting to a widerarea. Viewers always come up with difficulties when analyzing Escher’s illusion art.The clearer his representation is, the more complex the viewers may feel. Viewersexperience an aesthetic entertainment from this complex feeling. From thecomprehensive survey of Escher’s work, the mathematical plane mosaic or theparadox of spatial composition, we can see that he devoted his life to search andexpand the possibility of expressing two-dimension, and every painting is the recordof his thoughts.This thesis, focusing on the ideological core of Escher’s illusion art, thecontradiction and tension of two-dimensional art, analyzes Escher’s illusion of art as awhole. Starting with the expression form of Escher, basing on the illusion art theory ofGombrich, and combining with the theory of the visual psychology, this thesis deeplyanalyzes the formation of Escher’s illusion art from the creation and analyzing of art.Escher’s illusion art initiates people’s reexamination of the objective world. Itemphasized the important role of viewers in aesthetic activity. Analyzing Escher’sillusion art is participating his visual game, during which people can feel theexcitement and surprise in art creation.