James Jean

Taiwanese, b. 1979

Biography"Jean is an artist based in Los Angeles, California. He was educated at the School of Visual Arts in New York, and lived in Manhattan and Brooklyn before moving to Los Angeles in 2003. In a ceaseless torrent of images, his finely wrought and narrative-driven work has captured the attention of a world-wide audience and the admiration of other artists, designers, and filmmakers. Renowned for his draftsmanship, imagination, and ability to span the commercial and fine art worlds, Jean has created a deeply involved body of work that has been widely featured in print, fabric, large-scale installations, and animation.

Using pictorial conventions from such varied sources as Japanese Woodblock prints, Northern Renaissance paintings and etchings, Chinese scroll paintings, Shanghai advertising posters, comics, anatomical charts, and vintage printed ephemera, Jean's images evoke a sense of fantasy and the subconscious, seductive in its delicacy and sensuality. Beyond these sources of inspiration, there is a fundamental drive to circumscribe the sublime and the profane in drawing and painting, regardless of the context within which the work exists.

Immediately upon graduating from the School of Visual Arts, he became a regular cover artist for DC/Vertigo Comics in 2001. A unique mix of art historical and modern design references, Jean's covers received great critical and popular acclaim, winning him 5 consecutive Eisner awards and 3 consecutive Harvey Awards for Best Cover Artist, an unprecedented feat. This early exposure led him to create work for diverse and prestigious clients such as the New York Times, Rolling Stone, Atlantic Records, Playboy, Nike, and Target. By infusing this commercial work with his personal vision, he received top editorial and advertising honors from the Society of Illustrators, Cannes , and the Grammy Awards. A monograph published in 2005 collecting his sketchbooks and personal paintings entitled Process Recess became a legendary collector's item, as did the follow up volume which collected his commercial work in a large format. Though trained as a painter, his seamless and novel combination of digital and traditional techniques inspired a generation of artists and illustrators. Jean became renowned for sharing the process behind his images in his books and blog, a candidness and generous pedagogy which helped invigorate the design community and art students around the world.

Perhaps the most startling aspect of Jean's work is its constant evolution, breaching new narratives and environments. His large scale wallpaper drawings for Prada's Epicenter stores were turned into fabric prints and applied onto bags and shoes for their Spring/Summer 08 collection, and he wrote and designed an animated film based on the original wallpaper drawings. The design agency, 2x4, transformed Jean's work into a variety of store installations, merging his drawings with the architecture in Epicenter stores across the world.

Since 2007, he has stopped illustrating in favor of personal paintings, book projects, and gallery shows, summoning faded memories and tracing fleeting arabesques."

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