Alvarez - Art Analysis of Bond of Union - MC Escher 1956

 

 For the Art Analysis assignment, I chose Bond of Union by MC Escher. While looking through Escher's impressive gallery, this piece immediately stood out and the more I looked at this piece the more complex it seemed. Escher uses geometric shapes throughout his work, and in this drawing he creates spheres. Escher uses the spheres to provide form and space by giving them value and making them appear smaller and darker in the back and larger and brighter in the front. Escher depicts unity in this drawing by intertwining the two faces with each other through some sort of ribbon. This ribbon that forms the faces provides movement in the drawing because of the way it wraps around and connects to itself. Escher shows enough detail on the faces to make it appear real and whole by making patterns on the hair and contrasting textures throughout both faces. Simultaneously, he brilliantly gives an emphasis on the empty space as well to leave the viewer with curiosity, and maybe even confusion. This allows for us to try and interpret the drawing for ourselves.

  I believe that the most important criteria for judging artwork is understanding the piece’s history and the artists intentions of creating it. I think that by observing the skill and technical elements of the drawing and trying to link that with the arts deeper and more emotional meaning and purpose we can most accurately and fairly judge a work of art. Of course, art isn’t always like this and many times artists intentionally go against rules of technicality. For example, in abstract art some artists will leave it to how we see their piece to decide if it's “good” or not. Based off of my analysis,I think this drawing by MC Escher is great because of its creativity and use of different artistic techniques.