Entropy and Order (Editorial, NYRSF 328)

A short editorial this time. The issue is a few days behind schedule (once again), even though (once again) I had a plan to get everything fixed and out the door by December 31. Instead, a swirling vortex of entropy descended on the house, bringing with it repeated plumbers’ visits, multiple car repairs, and treatment for an elderly pet in failing health. (Rats are wonderful pets, bright and soft and loving, but their lifespans are bitterly, comically short.)

The holidays themselves have been great fun, even if freakishly warm. We spent a low-key Christmas together here at Valentine’s Castle, and then I hurried off to several days with my parents and old friends in North Carolina’s Research Triangle.

My parents thoughtfully suggested that we see the major exhibits at the North Carolina Museum of the Arts before I left, and I was glad to have done so. One is a touring show of the entirety of Leonardo’s Codex Leicester, a manuscript of his observations on water. This includes extensive discussion of the question of aquatic fossils, leading Leonardo to an early, mostly incorrect, theory of continental drift that included possibly the world’s first sketch of a unified supercontinent.

The other major exhibit was an M. C. Escher survey including hundreds of his sketches, prints, and artifacts, including wood blocks and lithograph stones from quite a few works. Original prints of (and sketches and studies for) all of his most famous works—Belvedere, Print Gallery, Castrovalva, Metamorphose, Waterfall, Relativity, Reptiles, Drawing Hands, and so many more—were present. Particularly striking was the spoiled stone from Concave and Convex; I must somewhere have previously learned that the lithographic original for limited edition prints would be marred to prevent them from being re-used, but it was weirdly poignant to see this elaborate finely carved work crudely slashed over with a giant X, a sort of self-censorship for commerce. Entropy, deliberately inflicted on the handiwork of such an orderly artist. It was also downright shocking to the Escher’s original simurgh, which I had not known even existed; this statue of a pre-Islamic Iranian human-headed bird featured in several of Escher’s works, including Other World and Still Life with Spherical Mirror, and its bizarre visage has haunted me for decades.

Anyway. As the year rolled over from then to now, I tweeted out, “May the next one be better.” May it be. .

—Kevin J. Maroney
and the editors