Martin Mull was best known to audiences for playing comedic characters like Col. Mustard in โClueโ and Gene Parmesan in โArrested Development,โ but a new exhibit opening next year at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art seeks to elevate the role Mull was most proud to inhabit: a respected painter.
โMartin Mull: The Joys of Indoor/Outdoor Living,โ co-curated by comedian Steve Martin and Hammer Museum Director Emerita Ann Philbin, comes to SBMA next June and runs through October. It will be the first major museum exhibition of Mullโs artwork in 20 years.
The paintings featured include scenes of unassuming houses visited by otherworldly guests, dead-eyed office workers, gravity-defying displays and lambs being led to the slaughter. They play with perspective, color, space and time to illuminate postwar American tensions, be they racial, political or existential.
โMartin Mullโs work as an artist will certainly be his primary legacy,โ Martin said in a statement. โAfter a full-time career in painting, in the last 20 years of his life with his technical gifts fully developed, Martinโs art coalesced into tight, narrative paintings of a peculiar nature. Combining surreal elements with family idioms, he formed his own worried portrayal of American life.โ
Martin Mullโs โBand on the Run,โ 2014. Oil on panel.
(Estate of Martin Mull)
The exhibit, which will take over the museumโs 6,000 square feet of main galleries, will feature more than 50 paintings and drawings by Mull, most of which come from the artistโs estate and the private collections of Mullโs entertainment industry colleagues, including Steve Martin, Jennifer Tilly, and Ted and Nicole Sarandos .
The exhibit is the second curatorial collaboration between Martin and Philbin since 2015, when they partnered on โThe Idea of North: The Paintings of Lawren Harrisโ at the Hammer Museum.
Steve Martin and Ann Philbin โ at the Hammer Museum gala in 2005 โ have been friends and collaborators for years.
(John Shearer / WireImage )
Philbin, who retired from her longtime role as the Hammerโs director in 2024, told The Times via email that the idea behind the Mull show came after she saw one of his paintings in Martinโs dining room.
โSteve talked about how Mullโs painting practice was his deepest passion, despite the fact that his fame was as an actor and comedian. It prompted me to do a little research, and I became very intrigued by his body of work. I wrote to Steve, โMartin Mull. Thereโs something there.โ Thatโs how the project began,โ she said.
Along with Martin and Philbin, the upcoming exhibition is led by SBMA Chief Curator James Glisson and Amada Cruz, the museumโs director and CEO. In a news release, a museum spokesperson said Mullโs work โupsets any storybook picture of perfectionโ and resists nostalgia while acknowledging its allure.
Martin Mullโs โEnvy,โ 2008, from the series โSeven Deadly Sins.โ Oil on linen.
(Estate of Martin Mull)
โItโs so deeply strange โ dark and funny, hopeful and menacing all at once,โ Philbin said. โThe paintings are about the smoldering tensions that underlie the American dream, so I think itโs a particularly apt moment to bring them back into the public eye.โ
Mull, who died in 2024, received his master of fine arts degree in painting from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1967. Though he went on to craft a career in the public eye as a musician, comedian and actor, painting remained his โtrue vocation.โ
Martin, a longtime friend of the multidisciplinary artist, echoed this sentiment in an email to The Times.
โIf a comedian says he is also a painter, run. Except this once.โ
