The artist Jim Nutt has been making a version of this imagined portrait for the last 40 years, a mode that has dominated his practice… His women never age, never seem to dislodge from a midcentury stylistic amber: all wearing smart up-dos, all clad in demure clothing.
If I’m honest, I savored this article about Jim Nutt in late 2023 as much for what he says, and what’s said about him, as for what he does. There are assertions in this appraisal by Max Lakin that threaten to outrun the interestingness of the art they describe.
Nutt, 84, can be both elliptical and impenetrable. He is happy to talk at length about the chemical bonding qualities of acrylic paint and the glassiness of hot-pressed paper, but shies away from things like his own thinking…
His forms have focused, from deliberately messy to phlegmatically planar figures, and his economy now is so precise that many figures materialize in as few as three or four marks…“They’re rather spare,” Nutt said,… “I work ‘em to death…”
The painter Carroll Dunham… told me, “I don’t think he’s hiding anything… It’s refreshing not to have to listen to a speech about somebody’s intentions. There’s nothing there except the pictures.”
“Quite often I really want to paint in a different world than the previous painting, even though it slowly morphs back into the same world… It’s like, I’m not going to eat any more tomatoes, I’m going to have a tangerine. Both are round.”
In 2003 Nutt said, “I rather liked the idea of being contemporary and modern. But, when I tried to do something modern, I just had no idea, no justification. Not only could I not rationalize it, it just felt terrible.”
(Max Lakin, “Jim Nutt’s Art Remains a Mystery. Even to Him,” New York Times, 9-14-23)
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EthicalDative 
Jim, thank you for this article about Jim Nutt. I like his spare use of lines very much.
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