Broken Frontier

In general, art books are difficult to review. With his absolutely stunning work here, James Jean makes it easy.

Art books, especially hard-covers like this one, are risky purchases. They often have sky-high prices that only a few artists can justify. James Jean is one of those artists. Every page opens up a new corridor of the mind of James Jean, be it strange, terrifying, or just plain stunning. Jean=s art, on its own, says more than many comic books on the shelves today.

After a few intro pieces, the meat of Process Recess arrives with some selected paintings from Jean. Gorgeous backgrounds and landscapes surround everything from a many-handed humanoid, to an apparent alien war, to a pair of brothers who box. Each piece says something, but it is never apparent and is always open to different interpretations. My favorite of this paintings section is a masked man holding his fingers like a gun with smoke rising. Jean=s creativity grows more and more impressive with each page turned.

The book=s next section focuses on Jean=s significant other, Kristie, or >K= as he calls her. Numerous and gorgeous sketches of Kristie sleeping highlight this segment, as Jean captures an incredible peacefulness in her face. Each of the sketches has some notes from the day included on them, which make them all the more real. From this point, Jean begins sharing his sketchbooks from 1999 with the reader, but to simply call them Asketchbooks@ is not to do them justice. Various forms of paintings are to be found here, each one more effective than the next.

In his sketchbooks, Jean shifts seamlessly between total realism in his art to more stylized work. The art to be found in these sections range from fun to absolutely disturbing, but they always remain absolutely gorgeous. These sketchbooks make up the bulk of the book and include many standout pieces, but my personal favorite has to be the very powerful image of a man sitting on a tree branch, from the end of the 2000 section. Collecting his sketchbooks through 2004, readers see Jean=s style vary while his distinct voice remains unique.

The next section of the book brings readers Jean=s sketches of architecture and people from his travels. As visually appealing as they are, this section but warms the reader up for the brilliance of the following section, ARecess.@ The book=s title segment, if you will, deals with, according to the artist, childhood and ghosts. He does a beautiful and oft-times disturbing job of capturing and meshing those two subjects. This book=s greatest image has to be the indescribably gorgeous painting of dragons that is found in the ARecess@ section.

So, the next time you see one of those pretty Fables covers and want to see more of the guy=s work, just head to your local shop and buy yourself a copy of Process Recess, an art-book that is well worth the cost and has tremendous re-reading value. The bottom line is that if you like pretty pictures, you should buy this book.

-Eliot Johnson