The Maze remains Kurelek’s most recognizable image. Its place within popular culture was firmly established after the American rock band Van Halen featured it on the cover of its 1981 album Fair Warning. The work’s notoriety comes from its highly graphic portrayal of Kurelek’s battle with mental illness. Effectively a self-portrait, its central image is the inside of Kurelek’s skull, split front from back, and opened up to reveal seventeen cranial compartments. Together they embody “a kind of pictorial package of all my emotional problems.”