Next week, The Rolling Stones roll into Raleigh, right down the road from the Museum. The legendary rock and roll band will play an outdoor concert at Carter-Finley Stadium on Wednesday, July 1, but the close proximity isn’t the only connection.
In October the Museum will host the most comprehensive M. C. Escher exhibition ever presented in the United States, featuring approximately 125 woodcuts, drawings, watercolors, and lithographs, some never before exhibited. The Worlds of M. C. Escher, opening October 17, will feature some of his best-known prints.
The exhibition will showcase Escher’s singular style, now mimicked throughout pop culture, including references from The Simpsons, Walt Disney World’s Haunted Mansion ride, and The Matrix series video games. But not The Rolling Stones.
Back in the sixties, the group’s lead singer, Mick Jagger, contacted the graphic artist to request usage of an image for the band’s second greatest hits album, The Past Darkly, on the heels of the English translation of the book M. C. Escher: The Graphic Work.
“Escher’s prints immediately reached a much broader audience than ever before,” notes David Steel, curator of European art at the NCMA.
In fact Jagger references the book in his 1969 letter to Escher, recounted by Mental Floss magazine after the story came to light in an Escher-related web forum:
Dear Maurits,
For quite some time now I have had in my possession your book (Graphic Works Of…) and it never ceases to amaze me each time I study it! In fact I think your work is quite incredible and it would make me very happy for a lot more people to see and know and understand exactly what you are doing.
Jagger goes on to request a commission from the artist of a work like Metamorphosis (included in the NCMA exhibition), as “the ‘optical illusion’ idea very much appeals to me,” he wrote.
Despite the band’s popularity at the time, Escher refused the request–and seemingly took offense to the singer’s salutation, as noted in his closing warning in a letter reprinted in the NCMA’s forthcoming Escher catalogue:
By the way, please tell Mr. Jagger I am not Maurits to him, but
Very sincerely,
M. C. Escher.
Steel, author of the catalogue, points out that Escher may have been more of a Bach fan, anyway, sharing many creative connections with the famous composer, as noted in Douglas R. Hofstadter’s G¶del, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid.