
It is easy for people to become use to the normal laws of physics and use to our dimension because we live in it.  The hard part is when you try to think about how higher dimensions work, what is possible in our world, and what could be possible somewhere else.  M. C. Escher was a Dutch artist that lived from 1898-1972.  He used his abilities at art to trick, confuse, or make the viewer wonder about the piece.  He had a very unique style of using a lot of mathematics expressed in geometry and structure.  His paintings of two dimensional shapes fading into simple people from the top of the canvas to the bottom used the technique of tessellation.  He also has paintings of structures where the way the structure is built is physically impossible in the dimension we exist in.  The majority of Escher’s art is heavily influenced by mathematics and physics.  All these pieces of his have a huge amount of meaning and a very interesting aspect to them.  Through the use of gravitational perspective, irregular perceptive, and mathematics in structure in M. C. Escher’s Relativity, he is able to open up the viewer’s imagination and make them think about logic and concepts in the art without having to really learn about them.

Relativity was first printed in December 1953 and is one of M. C. Escher’s most famous pieces for many reasons.  At first look this drawing looks interesting because of the staircases but there is so much observable detail in the structure.  It is very interesting to see how in Relativity there are three different forces of gravity pulling down on different parts of the structures in the painting.  These forces of gravity seem to affect the corresponding plane only, no single plane effected by more than one force of gravity.  There are multiple exits on each of the different levels of gravity that lead out to some king of outdoors area.  One interesting part of this world of three different planes of gravity is that the people he drew are oblivious to everyone else and their different plane of gravity.  He continues these planes of gravity out past the canvas out of our view.  Even though he does this he has exits in the building to the outdoors.  This lets us fill in whatever is outside of the building with anything that comes to mind.  In this drawing, you can see that the walls of some rooms are floors for another plane of gravity.  Escher has people walking around on different structures on these planes to give the viewer a better idea of how the planes interact with each other.  Also in the structure of the building he places doors that appear to be on the floor or rotated to the right to accomplish the illusion of having a structure meant for three different planes.  Just by analyzing this drawing for a short amount of time the viewer can very easily see the differences between its reality and this reality.  This enables people to be able to think more abstract about things.  To not just stick to the normality and the real but explore the science and the possibility of the unknown.

Another technique Escher uses in Relativity is the use of points of perception that are outside of the frame which allows the viewer to see three different planes of gravity.  These three perceptions are offset from the picture but you can clearly pick out how it is used by simply rotating the picture.  You can rotate the picture a certain number of degrees to see one of the gravitational planes right side up.  He set up his three-point perception as an equilateral triangle so the image wouldn’t be distorted.  The addition of a sun or light source in the opening to the outdoors makes the idea of this three-point perception even more interesting to think about what it looks like on the outside of the building.    Without the lighting and shading in the building with the addition of depth this image wouldn’t be anything compared to what it is.  By doing this it makes the viewer have to think even more outside of the box to imagine the different light sources that shine onto this structure.  In the third dimension, it is very hard for us to visualize this reality Escher created but it is very possible that this structure could exist on a higher dimension.  Research and development in mathematics and physics have been able to show a visual representation of a 4th dimensional structure called a tesseract.  This structure moves through the space in the 4th dimension by rotating its center through and around itself in a repeating pattern.  By studying Escher’s drawing and the behavior of the tesseract in the fourth dimension it would not be foolish to theorize that Escher’s drawing or something similar could exist in a higher dimension.  

In Relativity one of the most interesting pieces added by Escher was the use of stairs and other objects to connect the different planes and turn the picture into a maze of different gravitational planes.  One thing that is very different in this image is that Escher didn’t use an impossible structure.  This structure is possible but the multiple points of gravity are impossible.  This building was very well thought out with each opening out to light placed in a way to enhance the other parts of the image. From the outside of the building Escher adds light coming in from the big doorways that lead outside.  He has to add the light in a specific way so that it corresponds to the gravitational plane it’s on.  You can see a light source in one of the openings to the outdoors.  To create this shade or lighting effect Escher uses a grid pattern that covers everything.  If you look close in some areas, you can see this grid pattern becoming thicker in areas that require more shade vs. areas that are lighter.  Even the beings that are drawn out walking around this structure have this grid line drawn on them which wraps over them to show the depth of their bodies.  These gridlines also help you see the structure better.  The lines are curved when there is an ark so you can see the depth of the ark clearly and tell what it is.  To be able to draw a building like this it takes measurements and calculation to get all the lengths correct so your drawing fits the scale of the people.  Escher was a big fan of this and in most of his other pieces he uses physics with water and infinite stairs to confuse the viewer.  

Escher is one of the most creative artists and his artwork heavily supports that.  His art is heavily based on physics, structure mechanics, and impossible structures.  Most of the things he adds to the picture like faceless people are used to point to the bigger picture.  It is very hard to draw things that don’t exist in our reality because no one we know would have an answer.  Visualizing these structures naturally confuses our brain because we cannot comprehend these extra planes of gravity or how different things in a structure meet in a way that seems impossible.  But by exercising our minds and thinking about concepts which are beyond our third dimensional grasp, we can imagine how much is out there to be discovered in this reality or another.
