When I am especially depressed and frustrated, like say, tofuckingday, I like to watch printmaking videos online and feed on the weird ambiguity between hating on someone for one of the zillion reasons you can hate someone that makes prints (Raaa! Finger in the ink!) and being truly interested in what I see.
Arguably, living in Italy on your parents’ perpetual allowance, hitting on Swiss babes while writing well worded letters to friends back home in wherever, stating that you’ll be damned if you’re ever seen working in a “real job” (the only acceptable exception: running one’s own candy shop in Rome) doesn’t make it very difficult to be the object of some hate - or the fact that probably almost everyone who’ll end up reading this blog will have been overexposed to a wide variety of M.C. Escher prints as puzzles, calendars, wall paintings, mousepads and whatnot.
However, I ended up truly liking this 1h documentary about the life and work of Escher, with very nice insights into the kinda sad life he’s lived, too absorbed by his works to repair his private life (or taking refuge in work, which ironically looks the same from the outside).
Anyway, tl;dr - enjoy the video
Further reading:
Maurits Escher Foundation’s official MCE website, apply for licences here:
http://www.mcescher.com/
![Un Autre Monde by Grandville
Depicted above is an illustration titled “La Poursuite” out of the book “Un Autre Monde” written by French illustrator Grandville (born as Jean Ignace Isidore Gérard), published in Paris by H. Fournier in 1844.The illustration is a wood engraving, done by a professional engraver after the illustrator’s original drawings. A few are printed in colour, as this one is.(*edit: at least that’s what two sources say. The longer I look at the illustrations the more they look like lithographies. Will have to recheck that.*edit2: all sources I could find list the illustrations of “Un Autre Monde” as 185 woodcuts. In that case, insane fiddly work engraving all those cross hatchings.)The subtitles and text in this book were done by Taxile Delord (awesome name, don’t you think?), who wasn’t named in the frontispiece (only Grandville), only in the illustration of the epilogue. I’m fairly sure you’ve heard of Grandville before - his illustrations got cited and praised and blatantly copied, his personal life was a mess, losing wife and three young sons within ten years, succumbing to bad mental health and general unwillingness to go on, passing away aged only 44 in a lunatic asylum in Vavnes.But I’m not sharing this post to shine a light on the guy himself, no, I want to point your absolute and undivided attention to this gem on flickr:http://www.flickr.com/photos/bjacques/sets/72157622452294268/with/3952913837/
some awesome person named Carl Guderian [who lists himself as male, taken, occupation: internet plumber) and owns the domain vermillion-sands.com*, which should make the hearts of every Ballard fan pound a little faster (incidentially, VermillionSands was also the password of this tumblr - don’t worry, it isn’t anymore)] went and scanned / photographed his copy of “Un Autre Monde” and uploaded it to flickr under a creative commons. The only thing that bugs me: it’s got like 300 views in 3 years. Wtf! Tumblr people, let’s change that.
RT and happy browsing!
The most comprehensive online list of works can be found on the french version of his wikipedia article:http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grandville
German essay about “Another World” by Thomas W. Gaehtgenshttp://www.museo-on.com/go/museoon/home/news/_page_id_855/_page_id_609/_page_id_15.xhtml](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lpkhlrgpko1qkttp9o1_1280.jpg)
