From the legendary Tank Girl to live-action animations with Gorillaz, a
Chinese contemporary opera to an exhibition at the Saatchi Gallery,
artist Jamie Hewlett is one of the most energetic figures of
contemporary pop culture.
With influences ranging from hip hop to zombie slasher movies, Hewlett
emerged in the mid-1990s as co-creator of the zeitgeist-defining Tank
Girl comic. With then-roommate Damon Albarn, he went on to create the
groundbreaking cartoon band Gorillaz. The award-winning virtual pop
group of animated characters is a truly global phenomenon. Gorillaz have
topped charts around the world, toured the globe from San Diego to
Syria, and picked up hundreds of millions of streams and record sales
along the way.
Since then, Hewlett has continued to collaborate with Albarn on projects
including an elaborate staging of the Chinese novel Monkey: Journey to
the West by Wu Cheng'en, complete with circus acrobats, Shaolin monks,
and Chinese singers. In 2006, he was named Designer of the Year by the
Design Museum in London, and in 2009, Hewlett and Albarn won a BAFTA for
their animated Monkey sequence for the Beijing Olympic Games. In 2015
The Suggestionists, an exhibition of prints at the Saatchi Gallery in
London, demonstrated an exciting new direction in Hewlett's practice.
This special edition celebrating TASCHEN's 40th anniversary updates
Hewlett's first major monograph with around 30 brand new pieces. The
book illustrates his thrilling creative journey with more than 400
artworks from the Tank Girl era through Gorillaz and up to the present
day. Through stories, characters, strips, and sketches, we trace
Hewlett's exceptional capacity for invention and celebrate a polymath
artist who refuses to rest on his laurels, or to be pigeonholed into a
particular practice.
About the series
TASCHEN is 40! Since we started our work as cultural archaeologists in
1980, TASCHEN has become synonymous with accessible publishing, helping
bookworms around the world curate their own library of art,
anthropology, and aphrodisia at an unbeatable price. Today we celebrate
40 years of incredible books by staying true to our company credo. The
40 series presents new editions of some of the stars of our program--now
more compact, friendly in price, and still realized with the same
commitment to impeccable production.
