Mark Mothersbaugh is the co-founder, composer, lead singer and keyboardist of DEVO, the eclectic New Wave band whose 1980 song “Whip It” was a top 20 single. A polymath and experimenter, Mothersbaugh creates music for television (including the long-running Rugrats series and Pee-Wee’s Playhouse), assorted films and video games through his production company Mutato Muzika. As a solo musician, Mothersbaugh also produced four studio albums: Muzik for Insomniaks, Muzik for the Gallery, Joyeux Mutato and The Most Powerful Healing Muzik in the Entire World.
His long-awaited new book, Apotropaic Beatnik Graffiti (Blank Industries), published today, is a hypnotically hyper-visual collection of neo-Dada stream-of-conscious visual poetry, representing one human’s observations of “life on a sliding planet.” I had to look up the word apotropaic—and you should now do the same. Then, read on for how Mothersbaugh explains the concept with precise logic and scientific mindfulness.
It makes sense that a founder of DEVO would create such a beautifully bizarre book, but what does “Apotropaic Beatnik Graffiti” mean to you? And how is the reader meant to interpret it?
I started drawing, writing and making collages on postcard-sized pieces of paper in the late ’60s, and by the time the early ’70s rolled around, I had come to realize they represented one spud’s observations of life on planet Earth. They included everything from ideas for lyrics and sketches of dreams to questions regarding humans being the one species out of touch with nature. My obsession with these cards led to me creating a sort of intellectual repository of my work when I found this specific type of red archival album I still use to this day to keep my cards. At present, I have collected about 700 of these books, each containing 100 pieces of artwork. The central image of each of these cards is a photo of a plaster eye I had purchased in a botanica in downtown Los Angeles between 1977 and 1979. … I really don’t remember the exact date, but I was impressed that the eye was intended to ward off evil; its job was to protect someone from such schadenfreude, jealousy, maledicta and evil-doers of all shapes and sizes. I repurposed the image into my artwork, adding stream-of-conscious writings and drawings, and created my own take on apotropaic [having the power to avoid evil] imagery. Inspired by the Beats, which had a significant influence on my early artwork and DEVO, and graffiti, which evolved as a vehicle for anyone to express their pure, unfiltered, honest thoughts, I created Apotropaic Beatnik Graffiti.
The book isn’t your average black-and-white print book. There are over 500 full-color images and about 40 pages of text with a flexi disc of a song I made using phrases derived from this book. There’s no specific way to interpret this book other than being encouraged to go with your instinct. If you feel inclined to tear out a page that speaks to you and hang it above your bed or front door, by all means, go for it! The book can also be used like a Gideon’s Bible or an oracle deck, where one can flip to any page and live out the key wisdom presented to them that day.
You refer to the book as interactive, which, as you say above, includes the reader being involved with destruction, construction and reconstruction. This sounds like an ex-voto. How do you imagine the outcome of this?
As I said, the “reader” is encouraged to rip out a page and place it under their car seat for protection or above their bed for good dreams. I hope to one day fill the bedside tables of all hotel rooms with copies of Apotropaic Beatnik Graffiti.
How does the book represent the activities of the serendipitous mail art movement?
It doesn’t really represent the mail art movement. Actually, once I realized I needed to keep these cards, I stopped mailing them out to people, and every time I finished another hundred cards, I would put them in an archival binder that I would purchase from a local post stamp collectors shop.
The eye. Why the eye?
OK, this book draws from only five books of the 700 total I’ve been talking about, and they are atypical in the adherence to a central eye image on each card.
I was actually working on another much larger book than this when these images caught my eye, so to speak.
Eyesight has always been an important concept to me since a young age. I was legally blind up until age 8, when I received my first pair of prescription eyeglasses that forever changed the way I looked at the world. With this new superpower, I had the option of seeing the world as I had known it, blurry moving blobs of light and color, and this new-to-me perspective that was like seeing the world through a fish-eye lens or doorknob. That’s how the size of the postcard became my preferred size for artwork, as that size was the only thing that didn’t become curved and distorted from my glasses. In 2020, I became an early COVID patient, and refused to believe it wasn’t something “I was gonna just kick on my own.” However, I landed in the hospital, luckily making it through, but suffering from an accidental eye injury along the way. Since then, eyesight has taken on a whole new layer of significance to me, as I can only now see out of one eye.
The eye does not seem mechanical but the book, despite what’s going on around the edges of the meticulously positioned, fixed eye, leads this reader to wonder what is your intention. As I read it I feel I am being observed by an all-knowing presence. Is this valid?
No. It’s merely a collection of thoughts and ideas from one human’s perspective of the world around him. And, maybe. Maybe some of the eyes are reaching out to you in an attempt to protect you from the evil that floats around you …?
You state that this is the compilation of many books you’ve made. Are you still making these?
Yes. I draw on cardstock at some time during the day, pretty much every day. Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night realizing I hadn’t drawn on a card that day, and finish off a few more, making it easier to fall back asleep.
