Flower 1920

This is M.C. Escher's "Flower", and it's an etching, which means he painstakingly scratched lines into a metal plate to create the image. Just imagine the focus, the sheer concentration it must have taken to make this! It’s like Escher is trying to describe all of the natural world at once; the lines, the hatching and cross-hatching – he’s really going for it, right? You see how each tiny mark builds up to create light, and then darkness? It’s a dance of detail and abstraction – a prickly burst of life caught in a web of lines. When I look at the plant's stem, I see his hand, patiently coaxing the form into being. It reminds me a bit of Dürer’s botanical studies, but with a touch more… Escher! It’s like he’s not just showing us a flower but giving us a glimpse into the underlying structure of the universe. Artists are always in conversation with each other, borrowing, riffing, and building on what came before.