Jean Jullien

This is the secret to what has become one of the most unique careers in contemporary art; how do you make personal work that is also about the experiences of everyone around you? Not just locally, but globally. How do you make a trilogy of shows about your personal growth and life while simultaneously inviting everyone to come with their own life and experience and just… relate? How do you make humor, anxiety, fear, love, family, travel, and even the typical everyday errand or chore language-less but fully invested and emotional? Really, how do you give a piece of yourself to an audience and have them give a piece back?

 

Jean Jullien, in 2024, is a painter, illustrator, comic, sculptor, installation artist, muralist, writer, designer, collaborator, and universe creator. Or simply, he’s an artist. He moved the world with his everyman illustrations, transformed himself into a landscape and nature painter, and now has returned to the art world with a combination, a mix and remix of all his visual languages to create something perfectly universal. We spoke about the last chapter of his trilogy that is yet to come, how he found painting amongst a successful life of drawing (and how his love for drawing has returned), how the move back to France changed his life, and the nightmare of his calendar. 

Jean Jullien: I'm good. I feel like I'm struggling to keep up, which I think is a good thing in a way; it means I'm busy. Loads of projects, and I'm trying to be a good family man as well, to dedicate more time to spend with my kids, and I find that quite rewarding. So that just means more stress on the workload, but it's all good.

 

Oh, I wish that was that simple. The thing is, I've always wanted to, slowly but surely, do those bigger scale shows and installations where you get the audience to come into a space that you've created, and you can capture their attention better and drive a narrative that's more immersive. That's always been my goal, and I'm really stoked to manage to do that now. And what's in the future right now is more of that on a bigger scale, which is cool. 

 

But I've always kept doing site projects and a million different things at the same time, which I think is great. But I find those big projects to often be more rewarding because you can do a million different things, but all for the sake of one big narrative. You can make objects, prints, sculpture, paintings, moving images, and all of that just for one narrative, which is what I have always wanted to do. 

Yeah, totally. I see them as a trilogy, though. The show in Seoul was the first chapter, which was about where I came from and where I am now. The show at the MIMA is where I'm at in my life and career now. And then the next show, which will be with NANZUKA and their new museum in Shanghai, will be where we are going. But I feel like, to answer your question, yes, that was the first time I did something properly on this scale where I could drive a narrative.

 

I don't actually think about it. It's not a conscious effort. The first show in Seoul gathered a lot of stuff that had been validated by an audience. It was work I already had been given feedback on with people over the years—works that were those funny, everyday cartoons and sketchbooks—all of that. At the show at the MIMA, I decided to do something that I knew was very self-indulgent, but with a lot of sincerity. It was more about sharing my thoughts and questions. And then, I sort of found that it's not that indulgent because I know that I live and evolve within a society of many, and I'm just one of the many, so I know the potentiality and almost certainty that some of these questions will echo with the audience. We see and experience the same things in different ways, but we are part of the same context.

 

The next chapter of the trilogy will be about escapism. I think that the reason I'm angling towards that is that I find myself to be more and more anxious: eco-anxious, anxious about war, the pandemic, and all of that stuff. And I want to reflect on our consumption of media and how certain forms of media are now part of our everyday lives, part of our paradigm, and how that's a problem. It's difficult to articulate because, at the same time, I know that I'm not going to do something that vilifies media because, one, it's something that's part of the fabric of where and how we live, and it's also extremely useful for many things. There are many positives. But then I'm going to try to draw the outline of what I see as a solution, but on a personal level. And I know it is also a solution for a lot of people, which is escapism, role-playing games, video games, fiction, drama, all of that stuff. And then what's good about that? What's not good about that? So as always, I think it will be poking and questioning more than affirming anything.

Which is really nice for me.

 

Well, I think when we discussed the show with Alice and Raph at MIMA, we knew each other really well through doing quite a few exhibitions together. And they know that a big part of my work is to try to reflect on the everyday. And I think I posed them that question: Is this too self-indulgent, too much about me? And Raph was quick to say, “Well yeah, but your work in general isn't self-indulgent because it's very unsure of the world. There are questions here.” I like that. 

What I think is happening is that there's a lack of authority, which I think is extremely welcoming for the audience. It's not vertical, and I don't want it to be vertical. It's very much horizontal and I think, well, I don't know if I learned it or just... I don't want it to sound falsely humble or modest, but it's just that in the studio, we spent all day just talking about shit and exchanging and showing each other bits of work. ‘The other’ and the other's opinion are paramount in everything that I do. I think about everything that my brother does, and my friends as well, who share a studio with me. And when you make the work that way, with a collective spirit, I think it makes sense that the output has a little bit of that universality to it. But the narrative fabric of the show at MIMA was this sketchbook-like narrative where it was my characters just talking, questioning, and trying to formulate answers. 

 

I think I took quite a risky break from what the people were used to in my work, drawing everyday cartoony bits. I knew that I was always going to carry on drawing because I never intended to be divorced from that. It was more about me veering into a different way of working and trying something new, but I felt like something was missing. People were still giving me really nice feedback about the paintings, but I could see that there was something that people still missed about the drawings that I was also maybe missing, too. I wanted to find a way to bring the drawing back to what I was doing with painting. And the show at the MIMA, I think for me, is a happy reunion, and I'm stoked, and that's something that I want to keep on doing. And when we did that show with my brother at NANZUKA last October, it was a painting with some drawings on the wall. And I think it's a formula that seems to be working for what I'm trying to do. This is a good place to be.

Humility, because it was a long learning curve, and I don't even think that I'm anywhere near accomplished with painting. But also, that was part of the appeal for me, for sure. Not that I considered myself to be good with the drawing, either, but I felt like I had sharpened my pencils enough to have created a graphic alphabet that I could use to articulate certain things that I wanted to say. I also felt like, and because I always say this, but it's true, I'm not good at learning anything. So I felt like my drawing wasn't progressing, which is good in a way because it's coherent, but it has a glass ceiling. I felt like painting could resolve, narratively speaking, that glass ceiling for me. Give my work a bit more breathing, a bit more room for interpretation, and have landscapes and a lot of things like that.

 

But I also learned that, yeah, a lot of people were like, “It's a bit boring.” And I had to look back in the mirror and consider, “Is this bullshit? Are you making a huge mistake? Are you doing a career suicide, so to speak? And why are you doing it?”

 

And that just made me happy. I just really enjoyed painting. There was nothing more than that, and I wanted to continue, and I have. And then little by little, I had some nice comments from people, which is enough validation for anyone, I think. I was given the opportunity to do nice projects, and well, you know what? I'm going to do paintings for that, and I'm going to do it like this and like that. It just got to a point where I'm very happy, and I don't think I'm anywhere within the painting art world, but I felt like I'd cut it out a bit, pieced it back with my drawing, and made a semi-niche for myself. That's my work, and that's how I do it. I do a bit of sculpture, a bit of painting, and a bit of drawing, and that articulates a version of how I want to talk about the world. 

Right as I made the transition, the drawings got looser and looser. I just really enjoyed making more mistakes and making the work rougher and rougher. Then, when I started painting, I was like a little schoolboy trying to be good and to do good. And the more I painted, the looser I became with my painting and the happier it made me. So then, when I go back to drawing, I try to be shrewder in a way, to be more accurate, and to be close with my lines. There’s always this ping-pong effect when you go from one medium to the other. And now, with all the moves and being busy with a project that's heavily drawn, I'm getting a little anxious about getting back into painting. I don't know how much it is similar to cycling or something, but I feel like I'm going to have to relearn everything that I thought I'd acquired.

 

First, I think we have fewer excuses to be ignorant. That's a big difference as well. Even if you want it to be “ignorance is bliss,” it would be difficult in this day and age. Information is literally pushed towards you in an aggressive manner, and having an opinion is pushed on you in an aggressive manner as well. 

 

I think I genuinely want... we only have one life. I want it to be good. I don't want to be miserable. I am already a curmudgeon by nature, but I really want to try to use my work, and maybe it's so corny and I’ll hate it when I read it, but I want to bring happiness and make people smile. I do it for myself, and I think it's important. But at the same time, I don't think I'm naive. The natural part of my reaction is, by trade, to create quite joyful moments, visually. But then maybe behind it, the skeleton of it is extremely anxious, but the flesh is a bit more joyful. I think there's something along those lines.

I did more painting. So maybe I was happier, but like a lot of things, it was like a chapter changing. A lot of things changed at that time. It wasn't so long after I had my first kid. I tried surfing, and I started painting. I tried to do less commercial work, do less social media, and refocus on real life and less digital life. Not too phenomenal a result in the sense that I still have a lot of anxiety and an addiction to screens... I think I have a very relatable love-hate relationship with media.

 

But doing more painting, being back in France, having a family, and letting that family grow made me happier for sure. I look back at the London era at a mega fast-paced time where I produced a lot and I looked at the world a lot, and there was a lot happening that was culturally incredibly joyful and fulfilling. It was when I was studying, and then just after, I met a million people. I tried a lot of different things. It was great. But now I'm in a different era that coincides with certain changes, and it took me a bit of time to adapt. But now I feel like, even though I still do a few commercial gigs, I know what I want my work to be doing. I know how I want to use my work, and it's to tell stories that are more immersive.

 

I don't, because I really have zero pride in the idea of a nation or all of that. I love my friends and family and the people that I meet when they're nice, and I love certain dishes and certain landmarks, but I don't see myself like that. That was also the great thing about being in London and meeting people from everywhere. I love different cultures and all of that, so I don't want to pride myself on being of a place. But apparently, when I read about my work, I fall into a place of a certain French cultural heritage of satire, illustration, painting, and a lot of other things I wouldn't necessarily personally be able to pick apart as relevant to being French. But I've heard it a lot. It's just not a conscious thing for me.

Very badly. I'm a very poor manager of time.

 

No. I'm being sincere. I do a lot because I am bad at saying no, and I'm like a kid; I get excited by projects. I get really excited, and then I say yes to a lot of things. And then someone who works with the studio would be like, “Are you stupid? Why did you say yes to all of that? The calendar is going to be a nightmare!” And the calendar is often a nightmare. But then, because my way of working is quite rough and spontaneous, I also work with great people that can help me see the project through to a good result. But I don't know; the output is just quite organic. If I want to do something, I do it, and then I work hard if I'm into it.