The Infinitude of Creation

The Infinitude of Creation Commentary by Buki Fatona Cite Share Show Bible Passage The Dutch graphic artist M.C. Escher developed his own distinctive strategies for depicting the infinite by way of the finite, a theme central to Isaiah 40. According to Escher, in Circle Limit III, ‘strings of fish shoot up like rockets from infinitely far away’ (Coxeter 1979: 20). Escher’s ‘Circle Limit’ series draws on Islamic art in which tessellations—a mathematical concept—are used to depict the infiniteness of God. Tessellations are repetitions of interlocking geometric forms ad infinitum. In this work, we encounter a ubiquitous example of tessellation in uniform bathroom tiles which can be arranged infinitely in the same pattern if space and time allow. For Escher, following Islamic artists, tessellations are an allegory for the infinite. This is why he sees the tessellated space within Circle Limit III as infinite. In addition to the finite depicting the infinite, a further connection between Escher’s Circle Limit III and Isaiah 40 is the geometrical form of the circle. In verse 22, God ‘sits above the circle of the earth’. The circle is an endlessly fascinating geometric form and represents infinity in that it lacks a beginning or an end. In a 360-degree turn, the circle takes us back to the central idea of Isaiah 40: the limits of creation, or ‘the ends of the earth’, point us to the infinite expansiveness of its Creator. Yet another connection between Isaiah 40 and Escher’s Circle Limit III is the aniconic refusal to reduce the infinite to a figurative image. In verses 18–20, the idea of imaging God in the form of a metal or wooden idol is mocked. Escher’s Circle Limit III’s tessellations evoke the infinite allegorically, rather than figuratively. Similarly, the author of Isaiah 40 indicates the infinite being of God not by describing it directly but through an analogy between the finitude of creation and the infinite being of ‘the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth’ (v.28): An asymmetric analogical relationship in which similarity is suspended in ever-greater dissimilitude. References Coxeter, H.S.M. 1979. ‘The Non-Euclidean Symmetry of Escher’s Picture “Circle Limit III”’, Leonardo 12: 19–25