JIM NUTT
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Hardly unknown, Nutt’s work is wonderfully, startlingly inscrutable. One might make the same claim for abstract art generally or the conceptual conceits of Mike Kelly and his kind. But the “difficulty” in Nutt devolves, in good measure, from his ongoing transmogrification of the human figure. What about de Kooning’s vehement women and the livid flesh of Lucian Freud? In a year when art world institutions have focused attention on the former, MAM has made a generational and aesthetic leap in examining Nutt’s oeuvre, which remains singularly figurative and boldly nonillusional.
Nutt’s tweaking of form induces in the viewer a kind of waking REM, a frantic scanning to resolve the constellation of disparate images. His perversions of shape, visual disjunctions, and the dark circus of human relationships he depicts indicate an unusual candor, a formidable formal control, and a well-thought-out weirdness. From the gaudy cartoonishness and manufactured quality of the early pieces on Plexiglas to the oddly populated settings of the 70s to the nearly iconic portraits of recent years, the work is executed in true painterly fashion, as isolated planes of perception–pictures on a gallery wall.
Particularly stunning are the black-and-white images Nutt created in the 80s. Like much of the work, these are surrounded by painted frames that are part of the overall composition and underscore the objectness of the artwork. Jarring in their distinctive physiognomies–like “Dick Tracy” villain mug shots–these meltdown visages achieve an almost Arbus-like freakishness. But it’s the rarity of black-and-white portraiture in paint, the way this tonality tricks the eye into anticipating photography’s realism, that jolts the viewer.
