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Abstract

The Dutch graphic artist M. C. Escher (1898–1972) carried out mathematical investigations that led to symmetry drawings of three distinct kinds of tilings with two colors, capturing the essence of duality. He used several of these drawings as key elements in his prints that further expressed ideas of duality. One of the most complex of his “duality” tilings was realized in Delft ceramic tile, wrapped around a large column for a school in Baarn, Holland. Recently, a Salish artist in Victoria, BC, Canada, has independently produced a tiling that contains many of the same elements as Escher’s complex duality tilings.

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Acknowledgements

All M. C. Escher works © The M. C. Escher Company B. V. Baarn, The Netherlands. Used by permission. All rights reserved www.mcescher.com. This article was first published in 2008 in Bridges Leeuwarden, Conference proceeding of Bridges: Mathematical Connections in Art, Music, and Science held 24–28 July 2008 in Leeuwarden, the Netherlands, edited by Reza Sarhangi and Carlo Séquin, 1–8. Albans: Tarquin Publications.

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Correspondence to Doris Schattschneider .

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Schattschneider, D. (2017). Lessons in Duality and Symmetry from M. C. Escher. In: Fenyvesi, K., Lähdesmäki, T. (eds) Aesthetics of Interdisciplinarity: Art and Mathematics. Birkhäuser, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-57259-8_6

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