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A staircase represents not only movement but also stability – architecturally, staircases are pillars that unite different levels. Since ancient times, this simple formula has given rise to many plastic variations, to the point where today we can determine the architectural style and period of a structure from the staircase. To this day architects continue to experiment with stairs, often sacrificing functionality to play with forms. Perhaps this is because other means for ascending and descending have diminished the staircase’s practical function, leaving it only a romantic role in modern architecture.
Macbeth, 2015, Vie
M. C. Escher was one of the first artists to depict absurd stairs, stairs that are endless and simultaneously devoid of function. In his 1953 lithograph “Relativity” (V2, p. 50) he depicted an architectural structure with several levels united by stairs, full of geometric paradoxes. Escher eventually created a series of lithographs with impossible stairs and constructions, making him a major figure in the school of “impossible reality”. They were created under the influence of Lionel Penrose and his mathematician son Roger, whose model of a “continuous staircase” in the form of a square with no exit causes the walker, if he walks clockwise, to descend, and if he walks counter-clockwise, to ascend, in both cases endlessly.
Escher’s use of stairs as a dynamic symbol of forward movement, spiritual ascent and transformation, transition to a different, higher state, gave rise to a whole direction in the visual arts. Stairs as an Escherian symbol became an integral part of modern mass culture, appearing in the theater, cinema and animation. Martina Casey designed a set for a nonexistent spectacle based on “Relativity” (V2, p. 51), in which ladders as a metaphor for elevation, change and movement co
Escher’s “Relativity” has been recreated in mass-market movies as well, for example, the room where the final confrontation scene in Jim Henson’s “Labyrinth” (1986) takes place, and the moving stairs scene in “Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone” directed by Chris Columbus in 2001. In Christopher Nolan’s 2010 film “Inception” two episodes evoke and attempt to explain the Penroses’ “continuous staircase”, and characters climbing the stairs recall Escher’s“ Ascending and Descending”. Escher’s stairs also appear in the cartoon series “The Simpsons” and “Futurama” among others.
Staircases play key roles in the plots of many Alfred Hitchcock movies, notably in “The Lodger: a Story of the London Fog” (1927), “The 39 Steps” (1935), “Vertigo” (1958) (V1, p. 176) and “Psycho” (1960). The director used stairs to manipulate the viewer’s reaction and create a rollercoaster effect. As Hitchcock’s heroes go down and up stairs, their movement reflects the waxing and waning of suspense.
Barber of Seville, 2018, Boston Lyric Opera, set design by J. Noulin-Mérat
Probably the best-known staircase scene in the history of cinema is the Odessa Steps sequence in Sergei Eisenstein’s “Battleship Potemkin”. Cameraman Eduard Tisse recounted that he used sharp light and shadow to create drama in the frame. The film crew found more and more expressive opportunities as filming progressed on each of the 120 steps. The abstract idea of oppression is embodied in the drama of steps turned symbol of national pain. The scene is a tragic plea for revolutionary action, a metaphor for the confrontation between good and evil.
Penrose Steps in the movie Begi
Here one specific episode became the emotional embodiment of the entire epic of 1905. […] One part took the place of the whole. […][9]
The stairs in Rene Magritte’s 1936 painting “Forbidden Literature”, which addresses the duality of the world and the transition to another space, play a completely different role. Here among multiple absurd elements, only the stairway, based on that of the artist’s Brussels apartment, represents “this side” of reality, symbolizing a familiar part of our surroundings. This juxtaposition of prosaic biographical detail with mythology and text is what gives Magritte’s works their strange surreal character.
Frame from the film Battleship Potemkin, 1925, director Sergei Eisenstein
In the Chapuisat Brothers’ multi-story architectural installation “Hyperspace” (V1, p. 249), created in 2005, the stairs fill their original function. They co
Unlike his predecessors, the German artist Art van Triest completely rejects both the functionality and the symbolism of the staircase in order to focus exclusively on its “skeleton”. Most of his sculptural works, installations (V2, p. 206) and drawings (V2, p. 174) from the 2010s are based on a simply drawn outline of a staircase with broken and deformed steps, twisted into a Moebius band so that the ends meet. Studying the physical properties of this simple architectural form, van Triest perceives “first principles”, discovering what Schopenhauer called:
“…those ideas, which are the lowest grades of the objectivity of will; such as gravity, cohesion, rigidity, hardness, those universal qualities of stone, those first, simplest, most inarticulate manifestations of will; the bass notes of nature; and after these light, which in many respects is their opposite.”[10]
Combining different and sometimes contradictory materials, such as metal and wood, van Triest tests the limits of the plastic possibilities of the original form right up to its destruction. The artist continues the experiment outside of his “physical laboratory”, recording the stages of an endless research process and placing installations in an unexpected public context.
The Polish artist Magdalena Sosnowska is also concerned with the plastic possibilities of stairs. She addresses the topic of the psychological impact of architecture on humans through this familiar element.
“[I am] especially interested in the moments when architectural space begins to take on the characteristics of mental space.”[11]
8
Shizuka, Hariu, artist’s statement. http://www.shizukahariu.com/index.php/news/dystopian-dream (accessed 1/05/2020)
9
Eisenstein, S. M., Battleship Potemkin, 1925, From the screen to life, Selected Works in 6 vols., 1964, V. 1, pps. 120–135.
10
Schopenhauer, A., The World as Will and Idea. https://www.gutenberg.org/files/38427/ 38427-pdf.pdf
11
Sosnowska, Monika, Culture.pl. https://culture.pl/en/artist/monika-sosnowska (accessed: 10/20/2019).