Dutch Treat..

Being a Child of the Sixties, I remember visiting many of my hippie friends pads -- they call them cribs today -- and seeing principally two art books on the coffeee tables of their abodes. the first was usually a compendium of Frank Frazetta's other-worldly works works and the other was a collection of the phanasmagorically mind-boggling offering of M. C. Escher.

Well, I was skimming other sites and stumbled across one of The Other McCain's recent posts wherein he had a picture of a Lego recreation of Escher's work entitled Relativity:

It seems that the Lego folks have actually done in three dimensions what Escher would do in two. His work is below:

Now the art of the situation, if you will, is to determine which is the harder feat, Escher's original conception of a the folks walking up/down the actual rendering stairs or the "real thing".

Frankly, I admire the Legos effort -- having been a dad whose sons had a huge bin for the little snap-together bricks -- and that part of me gets the urge to go out and get some and attempt to do this for myself. (Alas, the vast horde of Legos went the way of the old baseball cards,the HO railroad set, and other cast-off remnants of childhood/fatherhood.)

But, far cheaper is to get one of those wonderful publications of Escher's work and pore over them. I present some below and, while I am partial to his rendering of familiar objects -- buildings, water ducts, mirrored globes, etc. each of his works are the product of one of the most adroit graphic artists the world has seen.

Self Portrait

Drawing Hands

The Monkey-Man Mirror

..and personal favorite..

The Waterfall

..and, yes, the waterfall does feed itself. Stare at it a while and you will see. I guess it's why my hippie buddies in the Sixties got the book: they saved a ton of dough on drugs.