Description
The print depicts a hollowed-out compound of three octahedra, a polyhedral compound composed of three regular octahedra, floating in space. Numerous other polyhedra and polyhedral compounds float in the background; the four largest are, on the upper left, the compound of cube and octahedron; on the upper right, the stella octangula; on the lower left, a compound of two cubes; and on the lower right, a solid version of the same octahedron 3-compound. The smaller polyhedra visible within the print also include all of the five Platonic solids and the rhombic dodecahedron.
Two chameleons are contained within the cage-like shape of the central compound; Escher writes that they were chosen as its inhabitants "because they are able to cling by their legs and tails to the beams of their cage as it swirls through space". The chameleon on the left sticks out his tongue, perhaps in commentary; Coxeter observes that the tongue has an unusual spiral-shaped tip.
Although most published copies of Stars are monochromatic, with white stars and chameleons on a black background, the copy in the National Gallery of Canada is tinted in different shades of turquoise, yellow, green, and pale pink.
Read more about this topic: Stars (M. C. Escher)
Famous quotes containing the word description:
“Do not require a description of the countries towards which you sail. The description does not describe them to you, and to- morrow you arrive there, and know them by inhabiting them.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“It [Egypt] has more wonders in it than any other country in the world and provides more works that defy description than any other place.”
—Herodotus (c. 484–424 B.C.)
“The next Augustan age will dawn on the other side of the Atlantic. There will, perhaps, be a Thucydides at Boston, a Xenophon at New York, and, in time, a Virgil at Mexico, and a Newton at Peru. At last, some curious traveller from Lima will visit England and give a description of the ruins of St Paul’s, like the editions of Balbec and Palmyra.”
—Horace Walpole (1717–1797)