A wide-ranging exhibition juxtaposes photos and prints by two masters of earthbound wonder.
It is unclear at first what we are seeing in the black-and-white photo of textured planes shot through by three rough diagonals joined by staggered, irregular verticals. Then this bold composition resolves into a scene any urbanite is familiar with: the zig-zag scar of a demolished stairwell. André Kertész (1894–1985) gave this offbeat vision a documentary gloss through the title, “Landing Pigeon, NY, March 2” (1960); once we discern the fluttering bird, the image becomes even more grounded in the real world.
But just when we, along with the bird, get our metaphorical feet on terra firma, further on in the gallery we encounter a small wood engraving print from 1945, “Three Spheres I,” by M.C. Escher (1898–1972), in which a fully rounded orb with regimented striations presses down an a second globe, flattening it by half even as it deforms a third into a tire-shaped disc. The rich shadows and depthless black background transmute what might be a geometry class teaching aid into something more like stepping stones to the cosmos.
Both artists — Escher with such tools as knives, chisels, gouges, and litho crayons, Kertész with lenses and film emulsion — journeyed through the mundane to arrive at the extraordinary.
