{"data":{"id":"650","type":"artist","attributes":{"id":650,"topgoose_id":1911,"tms_id":650,"display_name":"Neil Jenney","sort_name":"Jenney Neil","display_date":"1945–","begin_date":"1945","end_date":"0","biography":"\u003cp\u003eIn the New York art world of the late 1960s, Neil Jenney, who began his career making sculpture, faced a scene dominated by the austerity of Minimalism and the slick, post-Pop imagery of Photorealism. Wishing to challenge the classicizing aesthetics of the latter, which he considered “a bad idea done pretty,” Jenney abandoned his work in sculpture and turned to figurative painting. \u003ca href=\"/collection/works/37795\"\u003e\u003cem\u003eThreat and Sanctuary\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/a\u003e is part of a series of paintings that Jenney completed in the late 1960s and early 1970s for which he made deliberate use of thinly applied, visible brushstrokes of pigment, underscoring the artist’s desire to “never avoid the realization that I was using paint . . . I wanted to emphasize it.” He described his new works as “good ideas done badly,” heralding what would later be referred to as “Bad Painting”—a category that included Jenney’s work as well as that of artists such as \u003ca href=\"/artists/183\"\u003eJoan Brown\u003c/a\u003e and \u003ca href=\"/artists/1392\"\u003eWilliam Wegman\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eHis paintings frequently addressed\ncontradictory ideas or relationships;\nin\u003cem\u003e\u0026nbsp;Threat and Sanctuary\u003c/em\u003e a lone figure swims toward a life raft amid three encroaching predatory sharks. Jenney’s composition is painfully humorous in its paradox though he has stated he is interested in the relationships between objects rather than narrative, because, as he explained, “I think that is what realism deals with—objects relating to other objects.” Jenney crafted deep black frames for his paintings to enhance their illusionism and added their titles to the wooden component, usually two nouns conjoined by the word “and.” The associations prompted by the combination of words and image hint at Jenney’s connection to Conceptual approaches.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eAfter 1970, Jenney turned to making\nhis so-called “good paintings”—finely wrought\nstudies of the natural world that suggest\na wry allegorical commentary on humankind’s\ninteraction with the environment.\u003c/p\u003e","on_view":false,"artport":false,"biennial":true,"collection":true,"ulan_id":"500115643","wikidata_id":"Q825963","created_at":"2017-08-30T16:52:36.000-04:00","updated_at":"2026-04-12T07:02:52.790-04:00","links":{"artworks":"/api/artists/650/artworks","exhibitions":"/api/artists/650/exhibitions"}}}}