The Magical World of M.C. Escher

Boca Raton Museum of Art, Boca Raton, Fla.

Through April 11

M.C. Escher created serious art, “even if the world doesn’t always take it seriously,” said Scott Eyman in the Palm Beach, Fla., Post. “Part puzzle maker, part fabulist architect,” this superb Dutch draftsman specialized in “optically complex,” geometrically ornate images, frequently using repeated motifs to visually hint at the concept of infinity. A pragmatic family man, he was infuriated when, during the 1960s, his intricate black-and-white images were ripped off and colorized for rock posters that “inevitably recall bad acid trips.” A capacious new exhibition at the Boca Raton Museum of Art reintroduces us to the little-known artist behind this overly ­familiar art. A man “who foresaw the altered perceptions of the late 20th century,” Escher was an important link between surrealism and op art.

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“Both exhaustive and exhausting,” this show encompasses more than 300 paintings, drawings, and prints, said Michael Mills in the Broward–Palm Beach, Fla., New Times. “If ever an exhibition called for judicious editing, this is it.” At the same time, I’m glad the curators included so many early works alongside the famous images he painted later. Though we see plenty of “buildings that look realistic but defy the laws of physics,” we also see the equally intricate—but perfectly naturalistic—Italian landscapes he created while living in that country during the 1920s and ’30s. Executed as woodcut prints, these prove that Escher was as adept in that form as in chalk and pencil. The classical architecture of the buildings, “perched on the hills and nestled in the valleys,” would clearly influence the impossible structures in his late art. Yet in many ways it’s Escher’s earlier, more conventional art that may be “his most extraordinary body of work.”