Mmmmmph

Maker Jim Nutt (American, b. 1938)

DateAutumn 1967 - 1968

MediumEtching on wove paper

DimensionsPlate: 11 3/4 x 7 7/8 in. (29.9 x 20 cm)
Sheet: 17-1/4 x 15-1/4 in. (43.8 x 38.7 cm)

Credit LineGift of Dennis Adrian in honor of the artist

Collections

Construction Collection

Object number2001.651

Status

Not on view

Description

Website Text

An enigmatic wordless drama unfolds in Jim Nutt’s Mmmmmph…, staging a showdown between the counterculture of the late 1960s and the wholesomely nutty society portrayed in Nancy (the ubiquitous and long-running comic strip created in 1938 by Ernie Bushmiller [1905‒1982]). Bushmiller is remembered for his minimalist communication style, but also for his embrace of both the surreal and the absurd in modern life through visual gags, in advance of such comic magazines as Cracked and Mad in the 1950s and Zap in the late 1960s. Nutt and his Hairy Who comrades were fans of Surrealism, and in this early mature work, Nutt juxtaposed the structural logic of frames imposed on—and in—Nancy’s world with the creative playfulness of surrealist games like the Exquisite Corpse (see 2001.575, 2001.581, 2001.583-584, 2001.586a), and the unpredictable semiosis of then-popular commercial parlor games like Mad Libs and Consequence. Such games of chance promoted open-ended play and generated unexpected relationships and outcomes. Nutt explored similar potential for deviant pictorial communication in the tenuously related visual incidents and doodles within the image, while taking advantage of the medium of etching as a kind of idiosyncratic pictographic writing reserved for intimate and sustained encounters. (See also 2001.385; 2001.388-389, 2006.84; 2006.86.1-8.)