To many music fans, Mark Mothersbaugh is best known as a member and a songwriter for art rock legends Devo and as a creator of soundtracks for some of Wes Anderson’s best films.
Yet, Mark Mothersbaugh is also a composer and a conceptual artist, who is now set to release a book of what he calls ‘visual poetry.’ Titled Apotropaic Beatnik Graffiti, the book is set to be published on March 12, 2024 by Blank Industries in association with Mutmuz Publishing. It is a collection of neo-dada streams of conscious visual poetry, and is described as “one human’s observations of life on a sliding planet.”
It also features a bespoke black die-cut “distressed leather” hardcover with embossed, spot-varnished 3D eye relief plaque, debossed gold foil stamped lettering, and gold gilded edge 115gsm matte art paper.
Mothersbaugh explains: “I have been doing art images and poetry on postcards and postcard size formats since 1969 when I first learned about “mail art”, and began corresponding with artists around the world. Somewhere a few years later I began keeping these cards, and every time I had 100 new ones, I would buy another red archival book and save them in it. All these years later, I now have close to 700 red books collected, and this APOTROPAIC BEATNIK GRAFFITI represents 5 of those books from this collection. These images were all created in the last ten years, and have been the source of lyrics and concepts for larger pieces, both two and three-dimensional.”
You can pre-order Mark Mothersbaugh’s new book here.
