Devo co-founder reveals his visual artistry
Some people know Mark Mothersbaugh as a co-founder and the voice of the rock band Devo. Others might know him as the composer of music for TV shows such as "Pee-wee's Playhouse" and the Wes Anderson movies.
But Mothersbaugh considers himself a visual artist, and a huge retrospective at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts underscores his claim.
Visitors to "Myopia," which opened Thursday, will see that one of his primary interests is postcards, in large part because they come in a handy size for someone on the road who wants to draw.
Mothersbaugh, 65, also likes them because he is myopic and can't see much without his glasses. However, he can work on a postcard by holding it close to his face. That has allowed him to produce tens of thousands of post cards that capture his thoughts and impressions. In the early days he sent them to friends.
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"At a certain point I realized they were like a diary, and they were my image bank," he said. "They were lyrics and they were the things with Devo we were talking about, or things when I was by myself I was thinking about, and so I started collecting them."
Still, some people might not be able to forget the music Mothersbaugh made — and how he has been jangling people's nerves for decades.
"Are we not men?" he sang in his band's early song "Jocko Homo."
"We are DEVO," his bandmates responded. "Are we not men? D.E.V.O!"
When Devo released the song in 1977, it fit perfectly in the off-kilter worldview of the punk rock movement. However Mothersbaugh said it came from an earlier time, when he and his art school friend Gerry Casale were students at Kent State. They were on campus in May 1970, when National Guard soldiers opened fire on students protesting the Vietnam War.
"They killed kids, and shot a bunch of other ones," Mothersbaugh recalled. "We were shocked, and they closed our school down. We couldn't go to school from May until September. And during that time Gerry would come over to my place and we were just talking about what we were experiencing and decided we weren't seeing evolution in process. We were seeing de-evolution."
De-evolution, or devo, became their obsession as they played music to fill the time. In time, they formed a band and hit it big. However, they didn't see themselves as musicians.
"We were these visual artists who also made music and film," he said.
Nearly 40 years later, after a career with Devo and as a film and TV composer, Mothersbaugh feels much the same way.
"I always did visual art. I have always done it and every day I do," he said. "I write music almost every day. But I draw or paint every single day."
As an artist, Mothersbaugh is extraordinarily prolific.
Just ask Adam Lerner, director and chief animator of the Museum of Contemporary Art Denver and the originator of "Myopia." Lerner first met Mothersbaugh a few years ago when he went to interview another artist.
He soon became more interested in Mothersbaugh.
"It was amazing to me that nobody had told his story," Lerner said, "that somehow no museum curator had thought it was appropriate to make him a part of art history."
Lerner had some second thoughts when Mothersbaugh showed him the four storage units jammed with finished work to go through. There are now 900 pieces in the show, including a room filled with bound albums of postcards for visitors to leaf through.
The show includes early Devo videos and later film scores, rugs based on the postcards and huge instruments cobbled together from old parts.
Mothersbaugh also produced a limited edition vinyl album for the show.
"Myopia," opens at the same time and next door to the MIA's show of the Codex Leicester, one of Leonardo Da Vinci's journals. MIA curators hope visitors will compare the creative processes of these two prolific and wide-ranging artists.
Mothersbaugh isn't complaining.
"Yeah, I hope he's OK with it," he said of Da Vinci. "I'm certainly happy about it."
Correction (5:26 p.m.): An earlier version of this story included the incorrect age for Mark Mothersbaugh. He is 65.
