Artist Birthday: Neil Jenney

Painter Neil Jenney has been part of what the Whitney Museum called in 1978 New Image Painting. It is neither Pop-oriented or abstract. Jenney’s work emphasizes vigorous, exciting brush work.

Artist Birthday for 6 November: Neil Jenney (born 1945 US)

Jenney described his style as realistic, tending to emphasize the relationship of objects to one another. His painting often address contradictory ideas, although there is no intended narrative. This painting is from his so-called "bad paintings" period (1969-1970). He worked in single-image statements, quickly both drawing and painting in loose, almost transparent brush work, but recognizable forms. They invariably contain two word titles joined by the word "and", often with the title painted on the hand-built frames.

Background

By the late 1960s, there had evolved several movements that consciously overturned the domination of Abstract Expressionism, including Pop Art, Minimalism, Conceptual Art, and Photorealism. By the 1970s, there were artists who eschewed these movements' emphasis on process, in favor of figurative work that prompted an appreciation of form and more evocative content rather than obvious or specific meaning.

In 1978 the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York held the exhibition "New Image Painting" which became the name of the tendency. The artists' styles varied widely, but they all ingeniously took elements from the above-named movements, presenting them in imaginative and fresh ways.

Neil Jenney was born in Torrington, CT. He is mostly self-taught as an artist, although he attended Massachusetts College of Art for two years (1964-1966). There he created Minimalist sculptures (usually found objects) and Hard Edge painting. He moved to New York late in 1966, where he initially worked in found object sculpture and installations, often routing through dumpsters for materials. Around 1968 he reckoned that painting was where the money is.

In painting, Jenney rejected Pop Art and Photo Realism as superficial. He felt that art world needed "veneration of the relevant." His first paintings were exhibited in 1969. The paintings of 1969 to 1970 are from his so-called "bad paintings" period. Those he painted after 1970 are called the "good paintings" period. The good paintings have endured into the 21st century, characterized by finely-wrought studies of the natural world with bravura lighting and meticulous brush work.