Neil Jenney: The Bad Years, 1969–70
This book was published on the occasion of the exhibition Neil Jenney: The Bad Years 1969–70 at Gagosian, 980 Madison Avenue, New York. It features more than twenty-five paintings made by the artist between 1969 and 1970.
Jenney began to make the Bad Paintings in the 1960s, referring to them as such after curator Marcia Tucker’s 1978 exhibition Bad Painting at the New Museum, New York. These purposefully sketchy, gestural works poked at preconceptions of taste and connoisseurship, and, according to Jenney, were “good concepts painted badly.” With them, he sought to indicate narrative truth through the depiction of elementary relationships between people and things.
The volume includes an essay by Paul Gardner, as well as an exhibition history of each painting and biography of the artist.