THE connection between mathematics and art has long been established, and it is brought sharply into focus in an exhibition at the moment of the work of the great Dutch graphic artist M.C. Escher.
A master of illusion with works depicting never-ending staircases, foregrounds blending seemlessly into backgrounds, and fish turning into birds, Maurits Cornelius Escher opened up a whole new world of art to a younger generation.
In the 1960s, when thousands of teenagers had prints of Escher's works on their bedroom walls or pinned up in study rooms at school, it was embraced by pop culture.
After a hand-coloured version of Escher's Reptiles print appeared on the cover of a Mott the Hoople album, the privacy-seeking artist famously turned down 'Mr Jagger's request' - having shown a dislike to being addressed over-informally as Maurits - to design a cover for a Rolling Stones album.
It was the British medical geneticist and mathematician Professor L.S. Penrose who had planted some of the first seeds into Escher's mind by showing him artistic illusion in the form of a continuous flight of steps - figures that, he said, were "completely new to me".
Lizards
As a homage because he was so impressed with the idea, Escher sent the professor an original copy of a print of Ascending and Descending, 1960.
Sir Roger Penrose, the mathematical physicist and philosopher of science, who is the Emeritus Rose Ball Professor of Mathematics at the Mathematical Institute of the University of Oxford, and an Emeritus Fellow of Wadham College, is Professor L.S. Penrose's son.
Sir Roger recalled: "My father passed down that wonderful print to me. It's now being looked after in the archives of the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford. The print shows monks on the ascending and descending staircase, seemingly going nowhere."
Escher is a one-off, a one-man art movement. Yet while much of his work is instantly recognisable, his work is seldom seen here.
And what may not be widely appreciated is the astonishing intricacy and meticulous detail of some of his lithograph and woodcut tesselations, and the sheer volume of it.
That is why The Amazing World of M.C. Escher, the first show of its kind to be held in the UK, is such a fascinating and welcome exhibition.
Day and Night, 1938, woodcut in black and grey
After its staging in a slightly larger format, at the Scottish Gallery of Modern Art in Edinburgh, this major retrospective has a home now, until mid-January, at the Dulwich Picture Gallery in south-east London, where it contrasts well with the gallery's dramatic European masterpieces of Gainsborough, Canaletto and Rembrandt Everyone who visits Dulwich has their own favourite Escher work. Mine is Day and Night, a print of which we have at home.
The exhibition sheds light on the different phases Escher experienced during his life, and some of his fascinations.
For example, after visits to Italy in 1922 and then on to Spain to see the Alhambra in Granada, he depicted Italian townscapes, and made copies of the geometric Islamic tiles and became intrigued by what he called the 'regular division of the plane', in which the outer contour of one object coincides exactly with the contour of the adjacent object, and how, when repeated, the designs create visual puzzles.
"Finding shapes to fit a plane in interesting ways is something that has fascinated me for many years, just as it did Escher," said Sir Roger. "My favourite version of my tiling has been used for the paving just outside the new mathematics department at Oxford University."
• The Amazing World of M.C. Escher is at the Dulwich Picture Gallery until January 17.
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