{"data":{"id":"958","type":"artist","attributes":{"id":958,"topgoose_id":1276,"tms_id":958,"display_name":"Jim Nutt","sort_name":"Nutt Jim","display_date":"1938–","begin_date":"1938","end_date":"0","biography":"\u003cp\u003eJim Nutt is among the best known of a\nsmall coterie of artists who studied\nat the School of the Art Institute of Chicago\nand began exhibiting together in 1965.\nCalling themselves the Hairy Who, they\ndisbanded by 1968 and are today considered\npart of the larger, unofficial group of artists\nreferred to as the Chicago Imagists. Inspired\nby some of the same sources—cartoons,\nadvertisements, pulp magazines—as the\nPop art movement then in full flourish in New\nYork, but forgoing the cool ironies of \u003ca href=\"/artists/1384\"\u003eAndy\nWarhol\u003c/a\u003e or \u003ca href=\"/artists/779\"\u003eRoy Lichtenstein\u003c/a\u003e, the Hairy Who\nproduced ribald, fantastical, humorous works\nof high-key color and exacting craftsmanship.\nNutt’s figurative work is at once scabrous\nand learned, synthesizing influences\nas diverse as European Expressionism and\nSurrealism with comics and folk art.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe early work \u003ca href=\"/collection/works/229\"\u003e\u003cem\u003eShe’s Hit\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/a\u003e exemplifies what one critic described as “Nutt’s frenzied psychopathology of everyday visual life.” Its bulbous, epicene figure is misshapen, even abject, a hodgepodge of parts and signifiers that seems to be coalescing and falling apart at the same time. Some elements bespeak a lively period vernacular— tattoos, dyed hair, costume jewelry— while others, including knives and the attack implied by the title phrase, introduce an unsettling violence. Nutt’s method, typical of his early paintings, intensifies the work’s compositional density and sense of immediacy: he painted on the back side of a transparent plexiglass support, a demanding process that leaves little room for correction or modeling in depth.\u003c/p\u003e","on_view":false,"artport":false,"biennial":true,"collection":true,"ulan_id":"500018267","wikidata_id":"Q6197218","created_at":"2017-08-30T16:16:03.000-04:00","updated_at":"2026-04-11T07:01:45.367-04:00","links":{"artworks":"/api/artists/958/artworks","exhibitions":"/api/artists/958/exhibitions"}}}}