Fishes and Scales 1959

M.C. Escher created this print, Fishes and Scales, using the woodcut technique. A woodcut is made by carving an image into the surface of a block of wood, leaving the design standing in relief. The block is then inked and printed on paper. Look closely, and you can see that the fish are not just a design, but a tessellation, an interlocking pattern that covers the entire surface. The sharp contrast between black and white gives this print a graphic quality. Escher was very interested in mathematics, and you can see it here in the precise geometry of the design. But notice, too, that this is not just a cold, technical exercise. The scales of the fish are rendered with careful detail, and they almost seem to swim before our eyes. Woodcut is an old technique, associated with folk art and printed ephemera, but Escher transformed it into something new. The beauty of the print resides in the tension between the handmade and the machine-made, the organic and the geometric, craft and fine art.