MC ESCHER "Hand with reflecting sphere"
MC Escher was obsessed with drawing objects that seemed geometrically impossible. He used perspectives and his incredible imagination to create brilliant drawings that made many uncomfortable due to their complexity. He liked testing the limits of geometric concepts and even though he didn't fully comprehend how, he also tested various mathematical theories with his art. Within his artwork "Hand with reflecting sphere" Escher tests the viewer's imagination and attention to detail. If one is to look closely they can see Escher has distorted the curvature of the furniture within the room to match what an accurate reflection seen on a sphere would be. Escher also paints himself as the central focal point of the artwork so that no matter what direction you view him in he remains at the center. Escher once said "the ego is the center of everyone's world," which makes one think that he most likely painted himself in the center of his artwork to emphasize this theory. Escher not only placed himself at the center of his artwork, he made himself the artwork. It is his hand that is holding the sphere that is reflecting his world of which he is the center of and it is he who controls where the painting changes from reality to a reflection. The background is void of any other detail which adds a greater emphasis to his hand. Escher lived during WWI and WWII, which was a turbulent time characterized by violence, selfishness, and little appreciation for the value of life. It is very likely that through his art he is attempting to portray the popular selfish sentiment felt throughout that time period. Similarly, Escher presents various viewpoints on life in his other works such as "ascending and descending", in which he depicts monks going down/up in an infinite never ending set of stairs. Just as he portrayed the idea that life is never ending and even meaningless in "ascending and descending" he portrays that all humans are egotistical and selfish at their core in "Hand with reflecting sphere."
My interpretation of his piece was a sculpture of a hand holding a globe. I attempted to capture the idea of "selfishness" by having only the one hand hold the entire world. If I were to relate my piece to the time period of Escher my first connection would be to WWII and Hitler's attempt to rule the world through his and only his perspective. Escher may not have had the same thoughts when creating his artwork but I believe he was attempting to make a deeper connection to the social context that surrounded him during the early to mid 1900's. Sadly, I am unable to present my sculpture because I had a few construction errors that caused my piece to explode in the kiln. I am unsure exactly why it exploded but it may have been because I missed a few air bubbles (I promise I did wedge my clay), or it may have been because the globe in the center of the hand had paper towels inside holding it up and something went wrong with them. As a result, I ended up painting what my sculpture was suppose to look like, a hand clutching a globe in its grip. For the sculpture, I tried to make the hand as proportional to a real life hand as I could, and I attempted to make the globe as accurately detailed as possible. The two pieces on their own held proportion as no finger on the hand was dis-formed or intentionally not proportional to the others and the landmasses on the globe were as close to "scale" to each other as I could make them. Overall, I think I had a successful and interesting interpretation of MC Escher's one of a kind "Hand with reflecting sphere."
Resources:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KUrGtXbg_6I
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7kW8xd8p4s
