Mc Escher wrote that this print “gives the illusion of a town, of house blocks with the sun shining on them. But again it’s a fiction, for my paper remains flat. In a spirit of deriding my vain efforts and trying to break up the paper’s flatness, I pretend to give it a blow with my fist at the back, but once again it’s no good: the paper remains flat, and I have only created the illusion of an illusion. However, the consequence of my blow is that the balcony in the middle is about four times enlarged in comparison with the bordering objects.”
Notice the conspicuous “hemp” plant on the fish-eye-lens blow-up of the balcony. Of course, the plant had no intended connection to hemp at all.
Of such interpretations Escher said this:
“I have never attempted to depict anything mystic; wh…at some people claim to be mysterious is nothing more than a conscious or unconscious deceit! I have played a lot of tricks, and I have had a fine old time expressing concepts in visual terms, with no other aim than to find out ways of putting them on to paper.”
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