Jim Nutt was part of a six-member artists’ group called the Hairy Who. Based in Chicago, they exhibited together around the country several times in the late 1960s. The group held no collective philosophy. Instead, they came together out of their shared appreciation for comic strips, ads, bawdy puns, and the visual culture of Chicago, including hand-painted signs, pinball machines, and product catalogues. They gravitated to the odd, the disturbing, and the ultra-local. Nutt’s Backman exemplifies these tendencies in their work—exquisitely made in a painstaking technique (the image was painted on the reverse side of a piece of Plexiglas) but with a comic book style that is invented, absurdist, violent, and perplexing.
