Eye of the Beholder

by Peter Kuper

Book Overview

Started as the first comic strip ever to run in the New York times, this silent set of strips chronicles the world, its foibles, its intricacies, its dreams through the eyes of most anything you can imagine. The trick is to figure out whose eyes they are before seeing the final panel... Kuper's award winning illustration have appeared in Time, The New Yorker, Village Voice among others. With an introduction by Eric Drooker.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1561631590
• ISBN13: 9781561631599
• Release Date: January 1996
• Publisher: Nantier Beall Minoustchine Publishing
• Length: 88 Pages
• Weight: 0.45 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.3" x 8.0" x 7.9"

Customer Reviews

It's all in the eye of the beholder

'Eye of the Beholder' is a fascinating collection of short comics by Peter Kuper ('The System'), originally published as weekly newspaper comics strips. As always, Kuper uses no text in his work; his formula for these 'visual puzzles' is quite simple - four panels set the scene, and provoke a certain question mark: then you turn the page over, and the fifth panel provides the punchline or solves the riddles. The final panel is always ruthlessly clear and in-your-face, often to powerful results. Through this method, Kuper sometimes makes you chuckle, sometimes makes you think, and sometimes put across a powerful social statement. But even if some of the strips are admittedly weaker than others, very few of these will fail to bring a smile to your face, for Kuper's original and clever thinking. As he did with 'The System' and his other works, Peter Kuper once again stretches the limits of the sequential art medium and tests its abilities and potential to the max. By using only five panels of unchanging size and shape and no text for every story, Kuper examines the strength that lies in compositions and juxtaposed images, and the level of communication he manages to get across with these limited resources is absolutely awe-inspiring. Much could be said for his highly stylized and immediately recognizable artwork, which looks fantastic here in high-contrast black & white. With this expressive style, and with each and every frame thought over to the smallest detail of composition and expression, Kuper shows the reader just the kind of potential comics have as an art form. It's a fantastic book that can be considered essential professional reading for anyone in the business, and will also look great on any coffee table.

Great Coffee Table Book

The formula works like this--there are four panels on the front of the page which give you a visual clue.Turn the page and on the back is the fifth panel, which "concludes" or solves the puzzle of the first four.Extremely simple, but extremely entertaining. The fifth panel usually takes a left turn to some quirky conclusion (which makes it that much more fun to figure out).I leave this out on my coffee table, and people are constantly hooked after just one or two "puzzles."It's important to get the hardcover edition, as it gets thumbed through by so many people that the paperbacks quickly fall apart.Great for your guests or a couple of hours of fun.There is a second book of these cartoons as well, called "The Mind's Eye."

Clever social commentaries, but an unsatisfyingly short read

Kuper cleverly presents the set-up in four comic strip panels, then "solves the riddle" of the cartoon in the fifth panel, which is "hidden" on the next page. Most of the cartoons contain some form of social commentary; unfortunately these are the weakest of the lot. The other cartoons show more ingenuity. The entire book will occupy about 20 minutes of your time, even if you ponder the solution.