The Dutch illustrator known for visually perplexing design is lauded as a great artist in an interesting if uncritical documentary narrated by Stephen Fry
![Escher: Journey into Infinity review – meet the man who pictured the impossible](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/2328dda544b2e926777b444c8e266ba286d6f9b4/389_737_3903_2342/master/3903.jpg?width=1200&height=630&quality=85&auto=format&fit=crop&overlay-align=bottom%2Cleft&overlay-width=100p&overlay-base64=L2ltZy9zdGF0aWMvb3ZlcmxheXMvdGctcmV2aWV3LTMucG5n&enable=upscale&s=7558213da07b687347f99de5f83b3c9b)
Dutch director Robin Lutz has put together a serviceable introduction to the work of legendary Dutch artist and illustrator MC Escher, whose name has become shorthand for a certain kind of brilliant illusion, infinite tessellation and visually perplexing design. He is probably most famous for an image he created, or at any rate popularised: the impossible staircase which ascends endlessly in a closed circle.
Escher’s work was well known in the postwar Netherlands, but it was only after a 1954 article in Time magazine that his reputation took off globally and he achieved colossal cult status in the US counterculture, with bootleg colourised versions of his prints appearing on posters and T-shirts. Escher was bemused to receive a letter from a certain Mr Mick Jagger asking if he would create an album cover – the answer was no, and Escher also rebuked Jagger for presuming to address him by his first name: Maurits.