Overview

In a nineteenth century Chinese lacquer box, Joris Escher finds two drawings of his great-uncle, the world-famous graphic artist M.C. Escher. The sheets haven’t seen the light in more than 90 years. He believes that these early studies may be the missing link in the development of Escher as an artist and starts a voyage of discovery to the origins of the fascinations of his great-uncle. Who was his Uncle Mauk? How did he become Escher? How did he, precisely he, begin walking down a path on which no one had preceded him and no one would ever follow? The reader is a witness - through the eyes of the artist – of Escher’s life-metamorphosis in four successive parts; his youth (Becoming Mauk), his art education as a young adult (Becoming a graphic artists), his happiest years in Italy (Becoming an artist) and finally, already in his late thirties, the transformation that leads to his spatial experiments (Becoming Escher). The transformation of the artist has been written in the form of a novel; but nonetheless always parting from the known facts of primary sources (letters, diaries, family albums). The mentioned parts about Escher’s artistic development are woven together by the chapters that are called ‘Ripples’, in which Joris Escher finds additional ways to bridge the gap of time between the reader and M.C. Escher. Joris learns to make woodcuts, thus he understands with his hands what his great-uncle did. He studies Mauk’s way of observing reality by finding and drawing on the spots in Italy and Spain where the artist made his drawings and finally he visits Escher’s eldest son in Canada. The ‘Ripples’ could be considered literary non-fiction. So in Becoming Escher non-fiction literature and literary non-fiction are locking into each other, as art and mathematics in Escher’s oeuvre.

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9781538190609

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Reviews

Becoming Escher proves it: only the endlessly multi-layered language of the imagination is capable of catching the man and artist in Mauk. An ingenious and far-reaching book. --Jan Vantoortelboom, winner of the Boekenbon Literature Award 2023

Author Information

Joris Escher was born in Amsterdam as the youngest child of a publisher and an English teacher. He grew up living with his parents and two sisters in the protected shadowy town of Laren, some 20 miles from Amsterdam, where his great-uncle M.C. Escher spent the last years of his life. After earning university degrees in Rotterdam and Leiden, Joris Escher began to write seriously in Paris with little success. He started a short career working as an advisor for mayor corporations in Europe, Africa and Latin America, after which he decided to establish and direct, together with his best friend, an exhibition center and a publishing house for visual artists from Asia and Latin American. Before writing Becoming Escher, Joris Escher has been designing and leading sustainable social change-projects, especially in the field of water. Becoming Escher is his debut. Currently Joris Escher is working on his second book.

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