Jim Nutt won his first fame as a member of the Hairy Who, a group of Art Institute-trained Chicagoans who began exhibiting at the Hyde Part Art Center in 1966 and became notorious for what New York Times critic John Russell called “outstandingly repulsive works of art.” “There is no doubt that the Hairy Who artists were perceived as odd characters,” writes curator Lynne Warren in the catalog for Jim Nutt: Coming Into Character, a retrospective running January 29 through May 29 at the Museum of Contemporary Art. Their works “provided more than enough evidence of perversity, deviance, and adolescent inanity—not to mention a debased attitude toward art, what with the sweaty armpits, boil-covered torsos, distended sex organs, and chopped-off limbs that Nutt especially seemed to delight in.”
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[Laughs.] You’re going to be disappointed in my response, because I really don’t know. This interest has manifested itself at different times here and there, but about 20 years ago I really sort of limited myself to it.
Was that a conscious decision?
Yes. I’m not working from source material or the thought of a particular person. It’s more attitudes, or something like that. I might start with a female personage that might have a certain attitude or a certain character.
Critics have speculated that some of your female heads are portraits of your wife or your mother.
Well, it’s not a puzzle to be figured out. Usually, I look for a title that isn’t one-dimensional, focused on a specific meaning. It has something to do with the way I look at paintings myself, and how associations come to mind as the eye wanders across a painting. What would be an interesting thing to be in somebody’s mind?
You’ve been married to Gladys Nilsson since 1961. Do you influence each other as artists?
Opens Sat 1/29. Through 5/29: Tue 10 AM-8 PM, Wed-Sun 10 AM-5 PM, Museum of Contemporary Art, 220 E. Chicago, 312-280-2660, $7-$12, Tuesdays free.
