name	Circle Limit
subject	impossible dreams
message	By the 1950s, Escher’s vision had attracted the attention of leading mathematicians such as HSM Coxeter and Roger Penrose. After the pair corresponded about infinity in 1957, Coxeter used Escher’s illustrations in a lecture on crystal symmetry. Upon reading Coxeter’s paper, Escher replied that the mathematics were “much too learned for a simple, self-made plane pattern-man like me”. Escher arrived at the same point as the intellectuals through his eye rather than his mind. He was enormously struck by one of Coxeter’s illustrations of a crystal because it showed him the answer to a question that had long perplexed him: how to make identical shapes become smaller towards the edge of the surface so as to suggest that they continue infinitely beyond it. With a compass he traced out the illustration’s pattern then applied it to woodcuts in his “Circle Limit” series. Until his death in 1972, he never lost his ludic touch. “Are you sure that a floor cannot also be a ceiling? Are you absolutely certain that you go up when you walk up a staircase?” he jested at an award ceremony in 1965. It’s a pleasure to see his mischievous brand of Zen given such sensitive treatment. https://www.ft.com/content/c870d8de-3f48-11e5-b98b-87c7270955cf
date	Wednesday October 7, 2020

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