Saturday, June 20, 2009

The Feast of Saint M.C.

Friends,

This week saw the anniversary of the birth of Maurits Cornelius Escher. Traveling as a young artist, he found himself overwhelmed by the Alhambra. Mulsim artists largely found themselves required to create non-representational works. As such, we find incredible works relating to patterns and geometrical relations in the form of mosaics and asrchitecture. These, in turn, made their way into Eascher's work.

The comedist question for this weekend is whether or not his works are visual jokes. They seem to have a set up and a punchline of sorts, but is it really possible to have a non-linguistic joke? Is it a sort of psychological slapstick or a non-verbal pun?

Is Escher's "Drawing Hands" a version of the same joke in this scene from Spaceballs in a different medium?



Live, love, and laugh,

Irreverend Steve