Forever and Escher

Where most people see puzzle-like drawings, Doris Schattschneider ’61 sees a synthesis of mathematics and art. She’s one of the foremost authorities on geometry in artist M. C. Escher’s works and the coeditor of a new book, M.C. Escher’s Legacy: A Centennial Celebration.

“I was always interested in art,” Schattschneider says. “As an undergraduate at Rochester, I took as many studio art courses as I could, but at the time there was no studio art major. I became a mathematics major, but I never lost my love for art.”

When she began teaching mathematics at Moravian College in Pennsylvania in 1968, she combined her love of math and art in a one-month course offered in the one-class “January term” entitled The Mathematics of Decorative Art.

“There really wasn’t anything available at the layman’s level to teach decorative art, so I taught myself as I went, and had the students use Escher and Islamic art as examples of geometric art,” she says.

She read about Escher’s notebooks and became interested in finding out how a printmaker with no mathematical background could create geometric art with such precision, so in 1976 she traveled to the City Museum in The Hague to see them for herself.

“I thought, ‘Somebody ought to write a book about this,’” she says, “and then I realized that somebody was going to have to be me.”

Thirty years, three books, and countless presentations later, Schattschneider is still addressing the bridge between art and science. Her recent book celebrates what would have been Escher’s 100th birthday with a collection of artwork, lectures, and essays inspired by Escher’s work presented at the centennial celebration in Italy in 1998.

Why the continued fascination with Escher? “It’s the geometric element, but it’s also the surprises,” she says. “You can look at his artwork, look away, look again, and see more every time. It’s that element of surprise that fascinates, especially young people, scientists, and mathematicians. If you’re looking for intellectual depth in art, Escher has it.”