James Jean (b. 1979) is an artist who paints in acrylic, draws in graphite and ink, and also works digitally.,,Born in Taipei, he moved to New Jersey with his family at a young age and lives and works in Los Angeles.He has also designed film posters, including those for three films nominated for Oscars in 2023.
Jean completed a B.F.A. at the School of Visual Arts in New York in 2001. He received the Eisner Award for Best Cover Artist in each year from 2004 to 2008.In 2008 DC/Vertigo published a book of his covers for Fables, and he made the animated film Trembled Blossoms for Prada's spring/summer 2008 collection.
A falling figure called the Descendent first appeared in an epic 2019 painting. It has since become a recurring motif in his explorations of time, space and fantasy. The figure is the subject of Descendent - Lucid Dreamer, his first time-limited sculpture, which is cast in frosted resin.The solo exhibition “Eternal Spiral” opened at the Modern Art Museum in Shanghai in 2022. It was followed by further chapters in Chengdu, Shenzhen and Beijing through 2024. His work is in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco and the Lotte Museum of Art in Seoul.
Jean designed the poster for The Shape of Water, which won Best Picture in 2018. For the 2023 Oscar nominees Pinocchio, Everything Everywhere All At Once and The Whale, he used different methods for each poster. The Pinocchio poster began as a large graphite drawing on paper that he coloured digitally. Everything Everywhere All At Once was drawn on an iPad, and The Whale was an ink drawing on paper with light colouring added digitally.His work was included in “Guillermo del Toro: Crafting Pinocchio” at the Museum of Modern Art in 2022.
