The Artist Behind Beats' Year of the Monkey Headphones Draws a Lavish Fantasy World

James Jean likes to offset whatever looks beautiful with the eerie and the absurd. His work comes from life and memory, he says, but in the end it is the inner spirit of art that drives him to create.

Beats by Dr Dre may be the headphone brand most fond of collaborations. Its long list of partners includes Lady Gaga, the fashion houses Fendi and Alexander Wang, the streetwear labels MCM and Undefeated, and design studios such as Snarkitecture. Its latest partner is the visual artist James Jean, with whom it has released co-branded headphones: a Year of the Monkey special edition made for the Chinese market.

The headphones are mostly silver-white, with a flame pattern in alternating silver, gray and white across the surface and a gold rim around each ear cup. The white stands for a year that begins brightly and cleanly; the flames stand for burning away some of the past to make room for something new. Since this is a Year of the Monkey edition, a monkey is hidden in the design too, abstracted into the flames. 2016 is the Year of the Monkey (the bingshen year), which belongs to fire among the Five Elements. That is where the design's main motifs come from.

James Jean's work tends to leave the same impression: lavish and intricate, crowded with fine detail. Sometimes you find pure, calm figures in it, but more often the scenes are dynamic and forceful, with the sweep of a fantasy epic and an air of gloom and strangeness.

The man himself is far less showy than his work. On the day we interviewed him, Jean, who is not tall, was dressed head to toe in muted dark clothes, a faint smile never leaving his face. He spoke quietly but clearly, and without hurry.

Beats by Dr Dre x James Jean Solo² Wireless headphones

Works by James Jean

James Jean is Chinese American, born in Taiwan and raised in the United States. His last trip to China was more than 10 years ago, on an exchange program run by a government organization, when he was a 21-year-old student. After graduating from the School of Visual Arts in New York in 2001, he drew covers for DC Comics and grew into a successful illustrator, winning seven Eisner Awards (often called the Oscars of the comics industry). In 2008 he stepped back from illustration and turned mainly to oil painting.

Jean has many big-name clients and partners, from media such as Time, Rolling Stone, The New York Times and ESPN to brands such as Prada and Lane Crawford. Although he usually concentrates on his own art, he is curious about how companies put art to use in their products.

Last summer Beats emailed James Jean to ask him to design a special Year of the Monkey edition for Chinese New Year. Jean thought of the "three wise monkeys": one covering its eyes, one its ears, one its mouth, warning people to "see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil" and to act with care. The Analects of Confucius says something similar: look not, listen not, speak not at what is contrary to propriety. The three monkeys have long since entered popular culture and are common in Japan; for a familiar example, they are in the emoji set. That is why Jean found the idea without having to look anything up.

His reasoning went like this: people listen to songs through headphones, the songs are sung from someone's mouth, and listeners form their own thoughts about the music and express them. That links hearing, seeing and speaking. But he wanted a three-monkeys design that spoke to life today, so he reinterpreted the old story: his monkeys hear, see and speak. Their eyes, ears and other features are hidden in the flame pattern on the headphones.

James Jean's "three wise monkeys" motif, which appears on the headphones only in highly abstract form

In a typical collaboration, James Jean creates the imagery and the company applies it to the products it wants to promote. His work with Prada in 2007-2008 followed this pattern. He painted murals for Prada's stores, designed sets for its runway shows and made the animated short Trembled Blossom. His sprites, fairies and fantasy landscapes also appeared on Prada's clothing, handbags, shoes and packaging.

For that project, Prada gave Jean a list of keywords tied to the collection, words such as "romantic," "historical" and "sci-fi," and he started painting from them. After that, he worked out the story as a whole with the brand. For the animated film, he also helped create the storyboards.

Working with brands as a graphic artist is actually "simple," Jean says: each side keeps its own freedom. The brand develops its product and tells him its requirements, and he creates from his own point of view. Sometimes the requirements are specific. The fashion designer Philip Lim wanted him to paint a series of celebrity portraits in his Los Angeles flagship store; Apple simply asked him to explore whatever he liked using the iPad and its pencil as tools. Other times, as with Prada and Beats, the brand wants its product to tell a story.

In practice there is always back-and-forth, discussion and experiment, until they arrive at images that print cleanly, stay sharp on the product and fit the product mockups. Jean rather likes working this way. When a client sets him a problem to solve, it also opens creative possibilities and gives him ideas.

James Jean's paintings appeared on Prada products, in its stores and across a series of promotional campaigns

Skateboards made in collaboration with the streetwear brand The Hundreds

When he isn't painting, James Jean plays music. Or he may be taking or editing photos, reading, looking into natural science and technology, or browsing the "weird stuff" online. He calls himself an information consumer addicted to the news, always curious about the world and keen to stay well informed. He doesn't play video games, take vacations or have weekends, yet he never feels tense or overstressed. "Because I have passion and interest for everything I do," he says. "Actually, anything I do is a kind of creating, even when I'm not making a painting."

Q: QDaily

J: James Jean

Q: Your work is usually very complex, and sometimes features fantastical characters and scenes. Each time you turn something from real life into an epic, surreal piece of art, what is your thought process?

J: The greatest thing about art is that it always surprises you. Whenever and wherever it shows up, it can catch you off guard. I'm not always consciously thinking about specific things. I just make images that tie various ideas together. But afterward, when I look back, I realize I may have been inspired by something.

That's the magic of making art, I think. It's as if I did nothing, and the inner spirit of art drove me to make the piece. Usually I just sit there drawing ideas on paper, and when an idea doesn't fit, I keep trying, trying to solve the problem. At the end, looking back over the journey, I suddenly realize: "Oh, this is the kind of person I am. So this is where these works come from."

Q: When you start a new project, what is the creative process? How do you work?

J: I start with sketches, drawing my first ideas in a sketchbook. I keep trying, drawing and erasing, starting over and over, until I finally get something that feels right, and I feel I'm on the right track. Making a painting is always a long process, and along the way you have to destroy some things. Sometimes I push the work back to where it started and begin again, breaking up that hazy, undefined state and pushing it forward once more.

Q: You "feel you're on the right track." What does that feel like?

J: When I look at my work, I can feel balance in it. I'm always trying to keep my work in some kind of balance, not only visually but emotionally. When you put different images together, all these different elements are in front of you, some soft, some very hard, and your job is to balance the tension between them. You want them to coexist well. It's a delicate kind of probing. The piece is always in flux: some parts you want to pull back a little, others you want to push forward. It's that feeling of finding balance within tension.

Q: You've also said, "Things are more interesting when they're bittersweet. When I encounter pure beauty, I always feel offended." Why?

J: Most of us have probably felt this: when we see something that's too pretty, we find it boring. Sometimes we call it "cheesy." I don't know how to put that word in Chinese. It's like... eating too much cake. We have to balance flavors. We like sweetness, but we can also appreciate bitterness.

(Q: Can we read that bittersweet feeling in every one of your works? Or do you make the work and leave us to sense it for ourselves?)

J: Well, a lot of my work has dark elements, and something a little absurd and eerie, to push back against things that look beautiful. That makes it more interesting for me. I have my own dark side too, and it shows faintly in the work.

James Jean's 2015 solo exhibition in Tokyo (selected works)

Q: In 2015 you held a solo exhibition in Tokyo. The works have quite a few Eastern elements and a mythological quality. Can you tell us about your thinking behind them?

J: Those works all came out of my sketchbooks. I drew some of my ideas there, and in the end I created a series of different characters that are like mutants of culture. I take inspiration from the news I hear and from what I see happening in the world at the time, and work it into the paintings. Yes, many of them are close to half-human, half-divine figures. As you say, they look mythological, like the mythical creatures of contemporary society. But I also want them to carry a sense of the weight of history and of permanence. I like drawing these characters. It's as if they've always lived in my subconscious.

Q: When you call them "mutants of culture," do you mean they exist outside mainstream culture?

J: They come from what is happening in the real world: ecological disasters, terrorism, extreme patriotism and so on, all blended together. When I paint, I also pay attention to the texture of the image, letting rich textures layer over and wrap around one another... All of this together shapes something like a creature we might imagine existing.

Q: You mention subjects such as terrorism. What do you spend your time thinking about in daily life?

J: I read the news a lot, and I've listened to podcasts for a long time. I've always been an information consumer. I take in too much information every day, and sometimes I'm even addicted to the news. Technology, the future, the internet, how people interact online: all of that interests me, and it shapes my work. All those different ideas and viewpoints help me create those crazy characters and creatures.

Q: In fashion and design, people love promoting their products and work on Instagram. How do you see Instagram: as a personal space, a place to communicate, or something else?

J: It's a powerful way to build a personal brand. Right now many people believe almost everything they see on Instagram, but some are starting to realize it isn't all perfect. A photo shows a couple traveling the world, living a wonderful life, and behind the photo they've actually broken up. Those models who always look perfect spend a lot of time shooting those pictures, with careful makeup and carefully chosen beautiful clothes.

Before Instagram took off, we read magazines, and we knew magazines were "manufactured." But Instagram and other social networks blurred the line. People feel closer to brands and get instant updates from whatever they follow. You can create a very strong illusion there.

Then again, as an artist, I'm rather interested in creating illusions.

Image credits: Beats, James Jean Official Website, dangran