We live in a culture of uncertainty, and we respond by craving systems. Human beings require rules not because they are always good, but because chaos is exhausting. It’s not difficult to see why order has become a modern obsession: we increasingly tend to quantify our days with steps and sleep scores, we sort our actions into boxes that we can tick. In our daily life, we chase optimization and efficiency through routines that provide us with comfort. But this hunger for familiarity comes with a twist: we don’t just want stability; we want to experience instability but without the cost that comes with it. We want to be surprised, but safely. In that context, Escher offers something strangely modern, namely the experience of confusion, packaged inside a structure you can trust.
Through Escher’s exhibition at the MUDEC museum entitled “Art and Science”, the viewer completely immerses themselves in a world of optical illusions that create a sense of vertigo, and that at a first look might appear completely disorienting. However, the trick lies in the fact that every image is built using repeatable operations: mirroring, rotating, tessellating, transforming. Escher presents artworks that are deeply embedded in mathematical theories, thus providing stability amidst the initial confusion. However, interestingly enough, Escher’s relationship with mathematics was always a contradictory and often polarizing one. As a student, he failed mathematics more than once, and he developed an early aversion to the subject as it was taught to him. Yet, he always felt a clear kinship with mathematicians, once admitting: “I often feel closer to mathematicians than to my fellow artists.” The irony here lies in the fact that today his prints, so meticulously structured, are used to illustrate mathematics textbooks.
In one of his most famous works, “Relativity”, Escher draws what appears to be a single building full of staircases going in every direction. People walk up and down steps, pass through doorways, carry objects, engage in ordinary life activities, except that there is no agreement on where “down” is. The prank lies in the fact that Escher isn’t depicting chaos; he’s depicting three different “worlds”, each with its own gravity, all shown at once. What one figure perceives as a wall, another perceives it as a floor, what is “up” for one is “sideways” for another. The image gives you the sensation of disorientation, your eye keeps trying to choose a single correct perspective and keeps failing, but underneath it all, everything is rule-bound. Escher fits so many different shapes together in a way that gives continuity to the image, that reminds you that behind all this confusion nothing is chaotic, all is deliberate.
Another key aspect of the exhibition is its attention to Escher’s relationship with Islamic art. Comparison objects are used to show how the symmetry prints used by the artists recall the eastern culture. These engravings and woodcuts sooth as much as they unsettle, highlighting how pattern isn’t just decoration: it works as a way of organizing spiritual and intellectual experiences. In a time when many people feel overwhelmed by information, it’s powerful to be reminded that structure can be beautiful, and beauty can be a kind of anchor.
Finally, Escher’s continuous search for a way to depict the infinity is also oddly comforting. The artist experiments with the geometer Coxeter’s theories, trying to fit an endless pattern inside a bounded shape. Coexter was in fact renowned for describing (with diagrams) how a tessellation can be mapped so that shapes get smaller and smaller toward the edge of a circle, approaching a boundary “infinitely close” without ever reaching it. In Escher’s work “Circle Limit III” we see a circular woodcut filled with interlocking fish that diminish in size as they approach the rim, so that the pattern seems to continue forever while never leaving the circle.
The structure of this work stages infinity as something that follows a strict logic, that is legible to the human eye and designable by human hands. Across his works, from Relativity, to Islamic-inspired art, to Circle III, there’s a common thread: patterns that keep the audience entranced, almost hypnotized by their sense of familiarity. Therefore, the initial confusion one might feel on entering Escher’s exhibition, with closer attention, gives way to a sense of calm that comes from the mathematical symmetry underlying each piece. In Escher’s works, endlessness appears to be governed. Isn’t that reassuring?
I am a BEMACC student at Bocconi with a passion for storytelling and critical thinking. I see journalism as a creative outlet and enjoy writing about arts and culture, always aiming to spark discussion and offer fresh perspectives on the books I read. Excited to share my thoughts and be part of Bocconi Tra i Leoni!
