Visual Artist – James Jean ✔Certified
Bouquet (2016) Skill Mastery 🟨+ Impact🟪: 88.5%
James Jean’s Bouquet is an acrylic painting on canvas that served as the marquee image for the 2016 exhibition “Juxtapoz x Superflat” at the Vancouver Art Gallery, curated by Takashi Murakami and Evan Pricco. The painting depicts a figure inspired by Elmer Fudd holding up a decapitated rabbit head (referencing Bugs Bunny) with an explosion of Murakami-esque flowers bursting from the skull. An arrow pierces through the composition, literally pinning the layers together. The work draws from the Looney Tunes cartoon “The Rabbit of Seville,” one of only three instances where Elmer defeats Bugs. Jean also references Judith beheading Holofernes, conflating cartoon violence with Biblical narrative and Baroque painting tradition. The painting features hallucinatory colors, casual decapitation, and what Jean describes as layers assaulting the eyes “like an arrow through the eye,” creating a Superflat conflation of history and various modes of culture. The painting appeared on the September 2016 cover of Juxtapoz magazine.
Here’s how this rating breaks down using the Consistent Multi-Criteria Rubric method:
Technical Skill and Execution (25% of total score): 9/10 = 2.25 points Exceptional command of acrylic painting technique. Jean’s training at School of Visual Arts is evident in his meticulous line work, atmospheric washes, and ability to build translucent layers. The soft-edge rendering combined with hard-line accents demonstrates masterful brush control and understanding of edge variation.
Composition and Design (25% of total score): 9/10 = 2.25 points Strong compositional structure. The arrow device literally pins down all visual elements, creating a unified composition from disparate cultural references. The explosion of flowers provides dynamic movement while the figure anchors the bottom. The all-over composition balances chaos with control, though the arrow as compositional device is somewhat literal.
Originality and Creativity (20% of total score): 9/10 = 1.80 points Excellent conceptual vision fusing cartoon violence, Biblical narrative, Baroque painting, and Murakami’s Superflat aesthetic into a single cohesive image. The work successfully bridges pop illustration and museum-worthy painting. While building on Murakami’s established Superflat movement rather than inventing new visual language, the layering of cultural references creates sophisticated synthesis.
Color Use and Harmony (15% of total score): 8/10 = 1.20 points Vibrant, hallucinatory color palette dominated by warm golds against cool greens. Jean’s colors vibrate against each other to create visual intensity. The chromatic energy serves the conceptual layering while maintaining visual harmony, though remains within contemporary pop surrealism parameters.
Emotional Impact and Expression (15% of total score): 9/10 = 1.35 points Powerful visual and cultural impact. The painting positioned Jean within Murakami’s Superflat movement while demonstrating his departure from purely flat graphic style. The simultaneous seduction and repulsion, humor and violence, creates emotional complexity that resonates beyond initial visual shock.
Total: 88.5%
