Creativity Quote by M. C. Escher

Genius, in Escher's hands, is always half manifesto and half prank. The first line marches in wearing the costume of an inspirational maxim: chase the absurd, reach the impossible. It flatters the artist (and the audience) with a heroic storyline about risk and transcendence. Then Escher yanks the floorboard up. "I think it's in my basement..". collapses the lofty into the domestic, turning the "impossible" from a metaphysical summit into a misplaced object you might find next to old paint cans.

That reversal is the real intent: to dramatize how the sublime is manufactured, not bestowed. Escher's art is famous for making rigorous, logical systems generate visual paradoxes - stairs that climb into themselves, hands that draw each other, worlds that fold without warning. The joke reads like a behind-the-scenes caption to that practice. The "absurd" isn't a vague call to be quirky; it's method. You try something that shouldn't work, and by persisting inside the rules, you discover a new rule-breaking outcome.

The subtext is a gentle jab at the cult of the visionary. Escher refuses the romantic pose of the artist as prophet. He frames "the impossible" as something you can misplace, retrieve, inspect. It also hints at his working process: the impossible isn't an epiphany, it's downstairs, in the workshop, in the drafts and iterations.

Contextually, it fits an artist who lived at the intersection of high craft and popular wonder, embraced by mathematicians and poster shops alike. The line performs Escher's signature move: making awe feel like a well-executed practical joke.