
Jim Nutt
Untitled
2012
graphite on paper
16 1/8 x 15 1/4 in
41 x 38.7 cm
NUTT0650
Jim Nutt
Trim
2010
acrylic on linen with mdf frame
25 3/8 x 24 3/8 in (framed)
64.5 x 61.9 cm
NUTT0609
Jim Nutt
Untitled
2010
graphite on paper
15 x 14 in
38.1 x 35.6 cm
(NUTT0614)
Jim Nutt
Untitled
2008
graphite on 300 lb. wc paper
15 x 14 in
38.1 x 35.6 cm
NUTT0603
Jim Nutt
Sip
2003
acrylic on linen in artist's painted frame
23 3/8 x 23 3/8 in (framed)
56.8 x 59.4 cm
NUTT0572
Jim Nutt
Suit
2001
acrylic on linen
25 3/8 x 24 3/8 in (framed)
64.5 x 61.9 cm
NUTT0551
Jim Nutt
Hold Still!! (Please)
1980-81
colored pencil on paper
12 1/2 x 17 in
31.8 x 43.2 cm
NUTT0625
Jim Nutt
A CERTAIN DISTANCE BETWEEN THEM
1975
graphite on paper
10 x 13 in
NUTT0515
Jim Nutt
Coursing
c.1966
acrylic and collage on plexiglas with painted wood artist's frame and verso
37 x 26 in
94 x 66 cm
NUTT0620
Jim Nutt
Miss Sweat Pea
1969
pencil and colored pencil on paper
40 x 25 1/8 in
101.6 x 63.8 cm
NUTT0622
The Chicago Imagists of the 1960s and ’70s created colorful, energetic paintings and sculptures that often riffed on vernacular sources (comic books, pinball machines) and the eccentricities of American culture.
First, it’s between the idiosyncratically figurative Chicago Imagists (Roger Brown, Jim Nutt, Gladys Nilsson) and some of the outsider greats they discovered, recovered or championed: Ramírez, Joseph Yoakum and P.M. Wentworth. The back and forth between Brown’s meticulous landscape forms and Yoakum’s is especially rewarding.
Jumping ahead a few decades to the ferment of 1960s counterculture, Outliers and American Vanguard Art traces the entanglement of schooled and unschooled artists at a time of momentous cultural upheaval. A signal example is the work of the Chicago Imagists, a group that included Jim Nutt, Gladys Nilsson, and Barbara Rossi. Their attraction to raw, self-taught mavericks is encapsulated in Nutt’s praise of autodidact artist Joseph Yoakum and other outsiders: “Yoakum’s work for me is fantastic, true fantasy, and I came to learn that I had a right to my own when I realized I was willing to accept his.