Paul Feeley's sculpture Jack is a visitor favorite at The Luce Foundation Center. In fact, it's one of the objects people want to reach out and touch. And probably more would do so if it weren't for the sign that asks you not to. What is it about Jack? Perhaps it's the giant scale of this once-popular children's toy that naturally makes you want to interact with it. When objects are deliberately created out of scale, they're just begging for attention, aren't they? Jack makes me think of recent works by contemporary artists Jeff Koons and Damien Hirst that are also blown way out of proportion. I'm thinking about Hirst's spin art series and how he took carnival fare, super-sized it, and created an art market for it. Feeley's Jack seems modest in comparison. And that, I believe, is a good thing.
Feeley, who among other things, was Helen Frankenthaler's teacher at Bennington, created Jack in 1966, the year of his death, which just adds to its poignancy. He's known as an abstract expressionist who created color field paintings as well. One of these, Alruccabah from 1964, is also in the collection at American Art.
It's interesting to look at Feeley's two-dimensional work and see the image of the jack pop up every now and then. I've seen it in his paintings as well as in pages of an artist's book that Harvard Art Museum has online. In the last year of his life, Feeley gave the jack an extra dimension and created this sculpture that has found its permanent home at Luce.
