Meet my metaphors #6: The M.C. Escher staircase

"Ascending and Descending," by M.C. Escher

    When people find out I am that most exotic of beasts, a newspaper columnist, the common reaction is an uncomprehending stare, as if I said I shave butterflies for a living. No, I exaggerate. The common reaction is to not even process that I've said anything. Their expressions never change. It's as if I muttered some garble: "I flemulate klaxons." 

     Every now and then, though, the first word, "newspaper," does register, and to avoid saying something awkward  — "Gee, that's too bad" or "You are? So how come I've never heard of you?" — they roll with that familiar first word, and manage a question along the lines of, "So how is the newspaper doing?" 

     They may raise an eyebrow or flash a smirk — in my perception anyway. Not wanting to snap at their bait, I pretend to think, then deploy the following: "Journalism is like that M.C. Escher staircase that keeps going down and down but somehow never reaches the bottom."

     By then they've turned and gratefully fled. It isn't as if they really care about the answer. So I never get the chance to explain that I am thinking of "Ascending and Descending," a 1960 lithograph by the Dutch master draftsman M.C. Escher, who was all the rage in the 1960s and 1970s.  I certainly was a fan, so much so that as a teen I bought two expensive books,  "The Magic Mirror of M.C. Escher" ($6.95) and "The Graphic Work of M.C. Escher," ($5.95) which have sat on my shelf, barely touched, for 50 years, waiting for their moment to shine.

    In the second book, Escher explains the image in "Ascending and Descending" with charming detachment, as if he had come upon a real scene instead of inventing it himself:

     The inhabitants of these living-quarters would appear to be monks, adherents to some unknown sect. Perhaps it is their ritual duty to climb those stairs for a few hours each day. It would seem that when they get tired they are allowed to turn about and go downstairs instead of up. Yet both directions, though not without meaning, are equally useless. Two recalcitrant individuals refuse, for the time being, to take any part in this exercise. They have no use for it at all, but no doubt sooner or later they will be brought to see the error of their nonconformity.

    In a letter to a friend, Escher is less whimsical:

    That staircase is a rather sad, pessimistic subject, as well as being very profound and absurd. With similar questions on his lips, our own Albert Camus has just smashed into a tree in his friend’s car and killed himself. An absurd death, which had rather an effect on me. Yes, yes, we climb up and up, we imagine we are ascending; every step is about 10 inches high, terribly tiring – and where does it all get us? Nowhere.

     I'm not sure about that. As a young man, I believed Escher hinted at life's secret connection and essential mystery, the hidden world of unknowable complexity and beauty, the gears spinning under the false surface. Not to mention the rewards of probing beyond the usual. 

     I found the Camus letter in a 2015 Guardian article prompted by a Scottish show of Escher's work. The article said that Escher was inspired by a classic 1958 paper published n the British Journal of Psychology "Impossible Objects: A Special Type of Visual Illusion," by Lionel S. Penrose and his son Roger. Though the paper cites Escher on its first page, so perhaps they were inspiring each other. It's worth noting, however, that triangle they discuss is known as the Penrose Triangle, not the Escher Triangle, so maybe the Brits are the true pioneers here.

     Maurits Cornelis Escher was born in the Netherlands in 1898, the fourth son of a civil engineer. He became a somewhat successful artist in his 30s, traveling the continent, including Spain, where the tiles at the Alhambra influenced his work, which was to include elaborate geometric surface divisions, along with his growing fascination with reflections, Möbius strips and other odd takes on the world as befits a left-hander.

     Journalism isn't the only quality I put on Escher's endless staircase. In 2007, when Dennis J. Hastert driven from Congress, I noted, "While politeness in politics is like that M.C. Escher staircase that always goes down and yet never reaches the bottom, it's obvious that things are even worse now than a decade ago."

     I had no idea what was coming. In 1999, in a column on crudity that I'll repost tomorrow, I noted:

     After all, is not life itself often obscene, messy, crude? The more you delve into the real lives of people, the messier it gets. The degree to which this mess is reflected in the culture is dictated not by questions of right or wrong, but by fashion.

     Many fail to see this. They view culture as an endlessly descending staircase, like one of those M.C. Escher prints, that goes down and down but never bottoms out.

     Escher himself was not only a meticulous artist but a fastidious person. He was in his mid-60s when his work was embraced by the counterculture, a hug he did not return. When Mick Jagger wrote him a fan letter, suggesting he design a cover for a Rolling Stones album, Escher wrote back tartly to the rock star's assistant, "“Please tell Mr Jagger I am not Maurits to him.” He died in 1972.

     Now that I think of it, I have never seen an M.C. Escher print in a museum, not once, not even in the Netherlands. In that regard, he's a Dutch Norman Rockwell — a master craftsman shunned by the art world, perhaps for being too popular. Though the Art Institute just got its first Rockwell, so maybe Escher will get his due. Doing that checking thing, I see The Art Institute does own a variety of Escher prints. Perhaps they'll get around to putting one on display someday.