Ascending and Descending

This iconic work epitomizes Escher's ability to bend reality just enough to make it impossible, but only if you are looking!   
 
The choice of monks yields a verbal-visual pun:  in Dutch, the term for endless activity that gets nowhere is “monk’s work.”
 
The artist writes of this image in The Graphic Work of M.C. Escher, “The endless stairs which are the main motif of this picture were taken from an article by L.S. and R(oger) Penrose in the February, 1958, issue of the British Journal of Psychology.   A rectangular inner courtyard is bounded by a building that is roofed in by a a never-ending stairway.   The inhabitants of these living quarters would appear to be monks, adherents of some unknown sect.  Perhaps it is their ritual duty to climb those stairs for a few hours each day.  It would seem that when they get tired they are allowed to turn about and go downstairs instead of up.  Yet both directions, though not without meaning, are equally useless.   Two recalcitrant individuals refuse, for the time being, to take any part in this exercise.   They have no use for it at all, but no doubt sooner or later they will be brought to see the error of their nonconformity.”
 
This iconic lithograph is available.  Please inquire.