Neil Jenney
- Introduction
- Neil Jenney is a self-taught artist born in 1945. He attended Massachusetts College of Art in 1964. In 1966 he moved to New York City where he currently resides. His painting style was described by the art critic Marcia Tucker in 1978 as Bad Painting, a description which he has embraced. Jenney describes his style as realism, but it is an idiosyncratic use of the word on his part, meaning: a style in which narrative truths are found in the simple relationships of objects. His body of work during 1969–1970, which is the period for which he was first known, was a reaction to minimalism and photo-realism. The work's impact was large for such a brief period: according to New York Times art critic Roberta Smith "in those two years Mr. Jenney helped put representational painting on a new course and established precedents for the art of the 1970s, 80s and 90s." Often, Jenney's work of this period depicted pairs of objects which had evocative cause and effect relationships (such as a saw and a piece of cut wood, as are depicted in the 1969 piece Sawn and Saw.) In an April 15, 2001 review in the New York Observer of his show of work from the late 60s and early 70s at Gagosian Gallery, Mario Naves said that the paintings: "...aren't really bad at least not bad bad. That pejorative adjective, in Mr. Jenney's case, comes with scare quotes a mile high and connotes an art that combines the dead-end figuration of Pop, the dead-end materiality of Minimalism and a sense of humor that is, if not dead-end, then sharply deadpan. Mr. Jenney painted the pictures during the heyday of Conceptual Art, and if they were, in part, a rebuff to its disembodied verities, they also partook of its intellectual detachment." His painting Here and There (1969), which depicts a white fence dividing a field of drippy, green brushstrokes, was in the 2004 exhibition The Undiscovered Country at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles. His work is in many museums including the Museum of Modern Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington D.C. He currently shows with the Barbara Mathes Gallery. His painting "Meltdown Morning" is on display at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
- Wikidata
- Q825963
- Introduction
- Jenney's atmospheric canvases feature lonely landscapes. Other times, tonally painted canvases are housed in dark frames painted with cryptic titles.
- Nationality
- American
- Gender
- Male
- Roles
- Artist, Conceptual Artist, Painter, Sculptor
- Name
- Neil Jenney
- Ulan
- 500115643
Exhibitions
-
Against the Grain: Contemporary Art from the
Edward R. Broida CollectionMay 3–Jul 10, 2006
MoMA
-
Making Choices
Mar 16–Sep 26, 2000
MoMA
-
Slow Art: Painting in New York Now
Apr 26–Jun 21, 1992
MoMA PS1
-
Contemporary Works from the Collection
Jun 24, 1989–Mar 16, 1990
MoMA
-
Contemporary Works from the Collection
Dec 24, 1987–Sep 12, 1988
MoMA
-
Neil Jenney has
12 exhibitionsonline.
-
William Anthony, Wall Batterton, Congo (a Chimpanzee), Edward Fitzgerald, Neil Jenney, Angus MacLise, Bruce Nauman, Yoko Ono, Mel Ramos, Robert Rohm, William Schwedler, Diane Wakaski, Lawrence Weiner, Various Artists S.M.S. No. 5 1968
-
Neil Jenney Bucks American from S.M.S. No. 5 1968
-
Neil Jenney The Joanne Duffy Piece 1968
-
Neil Jenney Implements and Entrenchments 1969
-
Neil Jenney Them and Us 1969
-
Neil Jenney Trash and Trashcan 1970
-
Neil Jenney Beasts and Burdens 1970
-
Neil Jenney Biosphere #4 1971-76
If you would like to reproduce an image of a work of art in MoMA’s collection, or an image of a MoMA publication or archival material (including installation views, checklists, and press releases), please contact Art Resource (publication in North America) or Scala Archives (publication in all other geographic locations).
All requests to license audio or video footage produced by MoMA should be addressed to Scala Archives at [email protected]. Motion picture film stills or motion picture footage from films in MoMA’s Film Collection cannot be licensed by MoMA/Scala. For licensing motion picture film footage it is advised to apply directly to the copyright holders. For access to motion picture film stills please contact the Film Study Center. More information is also available about the film collection and the Circulating Film and Video Library.
If you would like to reproduce text from a MoMA publication, please email [email protected]. If you would like to publish text from MoMA’s archival materials, please fill out this permission form and send to [email protected].
This record is a work in progress. If you have additional information or spotted an error, please send feedback to [email protected].