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The Art of Mathematics

Volume 2, Issue 3
Summer 1992

"In my prints I try to show that we live in a beautiful and orderly world and not in chaos without norms, as we sometimes seem to. My subjects are also often playful. I cannot help mocking all our unwavering certainties ... Are you sure that floor cannot also be a ceiling? Are you absolutely certain that you go up when you walk up a staircase? Can you be definite that it is impossible for you to eat your cake and have it?"
"The primary purpose of all art forms, whether music, literature, or the visual arts, is to say something to the outside world, to make a personal thought, a striking idea, an inner emotion perceptible to other people's senses in such a way that there is no uncertainty about the maker's intentions. Thus an artist's talent is not only determined by the quality of the thoughts he wishes to convey -- for anyone can have the most beautiful, the most moving images in his head -- but also by his ability to express them in such a way that they get through to other people, undistorted."

    - From "On Being a Graphic Artist," by M.C. Escher