The Multifarious Simplicity of Jun-Pierre Shiozawa’s Illustrations for Ulysses

Abstract

With a highlight on the challenges and exciting possibilities of James Joyce’s texts, this article explores the illustrations of Jun-Pierre Shiozawa for Ulysses, a series of eighteen watercolours produced for each episode of the work in 2014 and composing one of the digital galleries on the artist’s website. The focus of the investigation is to show that the (apparent) simplicity posited by watercolour as a pleasing medium (with its fragile shapes smoothly contrasting light and dark hues in fine delicate textures) reveals a complex network of connotations and cohesive layers of meaning, constructed especially by means of the scenes selected for illustration, the point of view from which each one is presented and their association with Joyce’s text, captioned in short extracts below each image. The article is structured in one section and, in the analysis proper, I examine the main compositional resources employed in each illustration, the effects evoked by them and the relationships of image and text implied in the captions. Based on art and image studies, I also discuss in which sense the term “simplicity” is being used in the article, which adds a dimension to Shiozawa’s art.