While Martin Mull Achieved Fame as a Comedian, Painting Was His ‘Absolute True Love’

The majority of young people who study art in college have to contend with that most vexing of all entities upon receiving their diplomas: the real world. How do you keep a roof over your head and still find the wherewithal to pursue one’s metier? Though the likelihood of garnering a living income through one’s art isn’t unheard of, it is more the exception than the rule.Martin Mull, who died last Thursday at age 80, took a curious route upon receiving his Master of Fine Arts degree in painting from the Rhode Island School of Design. He became a comedian — a calling only marginally more viable, economically speaking, than sustaining oneself as an artist. Yet sustain himself Mull did, and handsomely too.In a 2014 interview with fellow comedian Norm Macdonald, Mull juxtaposed his work on stage and screen with that as an artist: “All of that . . . was simply a way to make money to buy paint. Painting has always been my absolute true love.” Mull goes on to talk about the joys of heading into the studio at 6:00 a.m. and his lone artistic dislike: “anything done half-assed.”Mull’s career in stand-up, television and film is considerable. His deadpan wit and middle-American mien provided a bridge between hippiedom and postmodernism. As with Albert Brooks and early Steve Martin, Mull engaged in a brainy strain of humor, not anti-comedy so much as the recognition that show business had its own peculiar set of conventions, delusions, and cliches.Martin Mull, ‘Catch,’ 2014. Hirschl & Adler Modern, New York; photograph by Eric BaumgartnerAmong his early signature pieces was “Dueling Tubas,” a parody of the instrumental “Dueling Banjos” from the film “Deliverance” (1972). You don’t need to watch Mull simultaneously shoulder a tuba and a guitar to get the joke — though it is an impressive feat. Instead, it’s a sense of know-it-all ironies being underlined and then underlined again. Mull’s bland affect simultaneously emboldened and brightened a smugness of tone. His musical talents helped to sweeten an acerbic mix.Mull came to national prominence as Garth Gimble on the prime-time soap-opera parody, “Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman” (1976-77). He took on the lead role in Bill Persky’s class satire “Serial” (1980) and was Colonel Mustard in the cult favorite based on the children’s game, Jonathan Lynn’s “Clue” (1985). Mull had a recurring role on the original run of “Roseanne” (1988-1997) and did a series of commercials for the economy hotel chain Red Roof Inn.Mull peppered any number of entertainments and seemed to grow more comfortable in his skin as he got older. He was especially winning as the bumbling private detective Gene Parmesan in the television series “Arrested Development.” When Mull appeared as himself in the documentary “Tim’s Vermeer” (2013), he was appropriately unassuming. When tech inventor Tim Jenison, attempting to replicate a Vermeer, says that it took him 30-minutes to learn how to use a brush, Mull replies that it took him forty years to do so. That’s the comment of a painter who took his craft seriously.Few of the obituaries and tributes to Mull have acknowledged the works-on-canvas. At the time of his solo exhibition at Spike Gallery in 2004, I had occasion to recommend his “cool dexterity and unexpected emotional heft.” Mull’s “connection to America’s collective memory bank,” I wrote, “is suffused with a querulous affection.” The pictures outclass most of what is passed off nowadays as significant art. Mull’s “one true love” is deserving of greater acknowledgment and, for some of us, his primary claim to posterity.

While Martin Mull Achieved Fame as a Comedian, Painting Was His ‘Absolute True Love’

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