Miss E. Knows

In early paintings such as this one, Jim Nutt referenced popular culture, particularly painted store windows and pinball machines, through his choice of medium and support: acrylic paint on Plexiglas. In addition, many elements relate to the comic-strip style of hard, crisp forms standing out boldly against simple backgrounds. In Miss E. Knows, Nutt also used a sequential format, incorporating small framed images in the upper-left corner of the painting. The work’s central subject is a grotesquely imagined, highly sexualized female figure—the artist’s satire of ideal beauty.

Nutt is a principal member of the Hairy Who, an irreverent group of artists who began exhibiting together in Chicago during the late 1960s. Their Surrealist-inspired work aimed at subverting artistic conventions and standards of taste, and they became known as part of the Chicago Imagist movement.