Winter 2025

The universe in squares [EXTRACT]

Chess Players: from Charlie Chaplin to Wu-Tang Clan

Designed and published by Fuel £29.95 Reviewed by Jim Sutherland

This book is structured around a simple idea. It shows people from around the world, in different times, playing chess. What it reveals is the deep cultural icon that the game has become. As the scientist Thomas Henry Huxley (known as ‘Darwin’s bulldog’) once said: ‘The chessboard is the world, the pieces are the phenomena of the Universe, the rules of the game are what we call the laws of Nature and the player on the other side is hidden from us.’

The book provides a fascinating insight into the world of chess and the multitude of people who play it. This universal board of squares becomes a stage, an arena, a boxing ring where two protagonists pit their wits against each other. The book features an amazing array of games and characters with one common thread – they all play.

[…]

Raymond Chandler wrote: ‘Chess is as elaborate a waste of human intelligence as you can find outside an advertising agency.’ The array of people shown in this book, mindfully and intently playing such a wonderful game, challenges this thought.

Jim Sutherland, graphic designer, chess player, London

Read the full version in Eye no. 107 vol. 27, 2025

Eye is the world’s most beautiful and collectable graphic design journal, published for professional designers, students and anyone interested in critical, informed writing about graphic design and visual culture. It is available from all good design bookshops and online at the Eye shop, where you can buy subscriptions and single issues.