Simon Fujiwara Who's a Muse? (Whobist Meltdown II), 2025

Who’s a Muse? (Whobist Meltdown II) by Simon Fujiwara is from his series of works recreating iconic artworks by famous, historically significant artists through the perspective of his original cartoon figure Who the Bær.

In this work, Fujiwara employed charcoal, acrylic and pastel on raw canvas. It depicts Fujiwara’s Who figure in a cubist style, drawing on Picasso’s series of works created between the late 1930s and 1945.

The figure is rendered in rounded and angular shapes. Golden liquid drops and an elongated pink tongue, both characteristic for Fujiwara’s Who cartoon, come out of the figure’s open mouth. The figure holds their hand up against their forehead, implying a gesture of confusion. Hinting on the artwork’s parenthetical title, the figure’s half-closed eyes and deep purple eye bags suggest a state of exhaustion or meltdown.