All that’s needed is a simple title, simply because Jean Jullien is a very singular artist. Where his paintings look observational, peaceful statements about nature and the surrounding world, Jullien’s work hums and bustles with life. His canvasses ebb with surf, beach, and coasts in an exploration of our gravitation to the outdoors, as well as the pull of returning to life as normal. Families gather together on the beach, surfing brings the rush of freedom, and green sea grasses rustle in lushly rough imperfection. It's romantic and it's ideal.
What is rare, and what Jullien’s eponymous debut monograph published by Phaidon Books portrays, is a body of work in deep conversation with the universal urge of being alive in the ever-present uncertainty of these complicated times. What made him internationally renowned were his illustrations, both commercial and personal, shared through social media in a language that spoke to our collective experience. Jullien was not only one of the first artists to use social media as a daily journal but did so in a bold and witty style that always found a way to seamlessly blend fine art and illustration. When he began his career as an exhibiting painter and installation artist, he summoned the ability to create looser and more personal works, observational at their core, but in parallel to Jullien’s own evolution as he got older. The results continue to chronicle one of the great journeys in art over the past ten years as Jullien refutes the notion that an artist must be pigeonholed. The art world is his oyster and this is the perfect moment for his career to be canonized. —Evan Pricco
Phaidon Books, phaidon.com
