Subtly conceived and artfully executed, The Madhouse Nudes is part love story, part mystery, a brave exploration of guilt and innocence. John Ordway is an artist obsessed with his work. In New York City that preoccupation merely aroused the ire of feminist art critics, but now that he and his girlfriend, Jamie, a potter and weaver, have retreated to tiny Delphi, Iowa, he finds himself the object of a more pointed suspicion.