Masterpieces in 3-D: M. C. Escher and the Art of Illusion

During his life time, M.C. Escher made 448 lithographs, woodcuts and wood engravings and over 2000 drawings and sketches. He is also known as books illustrator, painter, and decorator. It would take the volumes to publish all his works and Katherine Gleason's "Masterpieces in 3-d - M. C. Escher and the Art of Illusion" does not try to capture all of them. The book contains 40 of Escher's most famous prints and drawings in 3-D. Each print is accompanied with the short but informative and interesting caption. The prints start with the master's early Self-portrait in a Chair which was created in 1920 when Escher was 22 years old, and end with his very last "Snakes" (1969), woodcut printed from three blocks in orange, green, and black. Between the two, the fascinated reader-viewer will enjoy Escher's unforgettable prints showing impossible structures that lead nowhere in never ending movement, the visions of reflection connecting different spatial realities in one image, the closed and infinite systems of creation and cycles, and the prints from his series of tessellating figures that morphed from one form to another, from dimensionality to flatness, from darkness to light and back, and from reality to illusion. I've been a huge fan of Escher's works for many years since I saw his lithographs "Hand with Reflecting Sphere", "Three Worlds", Reptiles", "Drawing Hands", "Waterfall", "Relativity", "Cycle", and woodcuts "Day and Night" and "Tower of Babel" first time many years ago. They are all in the Katherine Gleason's book, and I can enjoy them now as 3-D images. The effect is mesmerizing, mysterious, and marvelous. I bought this book as the gift to myself, and it is one of the best gifts I've had. I open it every day, looking through the lenses of the fold out glasses at the picture bringing it into focus and watching it becoming alive and three-dimensional. I know it is about the laws of physics and optics but I like to call it a miracle that I am a part of and that happens in front of my eyes.