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拍品專文
Painted during the artist’s self-appointed ‘bad years’ period, Neil Jenney’s 1969 work Plowed and Plower exemplifies its author’s ethos during this time. Beneath its simplified composition is a complex network of dichotomies: realism sitting opposite abstraction, the real and the imagined, active as opposed to passive, and perhaps most significantly for the artist himself, good art versus bad art. The marriage of these attributes is seemingly antithetical but what makes Jenney’s work so compelling.
Plowed and Plower is quite literal in its title. Much of the composition, beginning from the lower right corner of the canvas, is occupied by an expansive green field of frenetic brushstrokes. This plane ends just short of a light blue strip of open sky. It is only disrupted by the brown corner of freshly plowed earth that cuts upward through the lower left corner of the canvas, the titular ‘plowed,’ and an ox harnessed to a plow standing in the middle of the field, the ‘plower.’ The exactness of the title is reflective of Jenney’s process, whereby in some instances a title generates a composition. Of his titles, the artist states they, “are crucial. They add to the visual expression, the literary realm.” (P. Gardener, “Neil Jenny 1960 to 1970,” Neil Jenney The Bad Years 1969-70, New York, 2001, p. 11) Whichever came first for Plowed and Plower, title or image, it underscores the significance of titles in the artist’s work, transforming a passive pastoral scene into one that portrays the relationship between an actor and an entity acted upon; another dichotomy to add to the tapestry.
Plowed and Plower also speaks to one of Jenney’s most ardent beliefs that in art, there is only abstraction and realism, and all other styles are either variations or combinations of the two. The subject matter of an ox plowing a field is one based in reality, and the composition of this work is certainly recognizable as such; however, the texture achieved through Jenney’s intentional brushstrokes and the flat, illustrative depiction of the figure and landscape remove it from pure realism. Even the subject, though rooted in plausibility, has an undercurrent of surrealism. Scholar Paul Gardener has remarked that Jenney’s rural landscapes of this period, “evoked memories, real or imagined, from childhood.” (ibid.) The scene is familiar in a way that is not easily distinguishable as being from one's own experience or from a reality they know exists but have not themselves witnessed.
This relationship between real and imagined, realism and abstraction, is in part the reason behind the artist’s use of the term ‘bad years’ to describe this period of work, and even why he deems it ‘bad art.’ As an art historian in his own right, Jenney deeply understood the broader scope of how art was valued. At the time that Plowed and Plower was painted, photorealism was still highly praised as a barometer of talent and thus ‘good’ art. Jenney found this extreme of realism to be hollow, and based his “smeary,” evident brushstroke style in direct opposition to it. Thus, if photorealism was ‘good art,’ the logic of dichotomies would dictate his as ‘bad art,’ and if the hyper-detailed ‘good art’ was hollow, then the simple, messy ‘bad art’ was full of complexity, tapping into something deeply personal to its viewers.
Plowed and Plower is quite literal in its title. Much of the composition, beginning from the lower right corner of the canvas, is occupied by an expansive green field of frenetic brushstrokes. This plane ends just short of a light blue strip of open sky. It is only disrupted by the brown corner of freshly plowed earth that cuts upward through the lower left corner of the canvas, the titular ‘plowed,’ and an ox harnessed to a plow standing in the middle of the field, the ‘plower.’ The exactness of the title is reflective of Jenney’s process, whereby in some instances a title generates a composition. Of his titles, the artist states they, “are crucial. They add to the visual expression, the literary realm.” (P. Gardener, “Neil Jenny 1960 to 1970,” Neil Jenney The Bad Years 1969-70, New York, 2001, p. 11) Whichever came first for Plowed and Plower, title or image, it underscores the significance of titles in the artist’s work, transforming a passive pastoral scene into one that portrays the relationship between an actor and an entity acted upon; another dichotomy to add to the tapestry.
Plowed and Plower also speaks to one of Jenney’s most ardent beliefs that in art, there is only abstraction and realism, and all other styles are either variations or combinations of the two. The subject matter of an ox plowing a field is one based in reality, and the composition of this work is certainly recognizable as such; however, the texture achieved through Jenney’s intentional brushstrokes and the flat, illustrative depiction of the figure and landscape remove it from pure realism. Even the subject, though rooted in plausibility, has an undercurrent of surrealism. Scholar Paul Gardener has remarked that Jenney’s rural landscapes of this period, “evoked memories, real or imagined, from childhood.” (ibid.) The scene is familiar in a way that is not easily distinguishable as being from one's own experience or from a reality they know exists but have not themselves witnessed.
This relationship between real and imagined, realism and abstraction, is in part the reason behind the artist’s use of the term ‘bad years’ to describe this period of work, and even why he deems it ‘bad art.’ As an art historian in his own right, Jenney deeply understood the broader scope of how art was valued. At the time that Plowed and Plower was painted, photorealism was still highly praised as a barometer of talent and thus ‘good’ art. Jenney found this extreme of realism to be hollow, and based his “smeary,” evident brushstroke style in direct opposition to it. Thus, if photorealism was ‘good art,’ the logic of dichotomies would dictate his as ‘bad art,’ and if the hyper-detailed ‘good art’ was hollow, then the simple, messy ‘bad art’ was full of complexity, tapping into something deeply personal to its viewers.