DAVID BEITZEL GALLERY Martin Mull would like nothing more than for us to ignore his celebrity. He has repeatedly referred to acting as his "day job," admitting that earning respect as a visual artist is his highest priority. But Mull's two careers...

Played out on postwar lawns, Martin Mull's suburban scenarios have a latent hysteria that suggests location stills for family sitcoms gone seriously awry. The deep shadow of an unseen observer falls on a recumbent young couple dressed in khakis and cardigans and situated...

Not long ago, some friends and I wandered into a Friday-night art opening in Chelsea for the actor—and apparently the painter—Martin Mull. Like everyone else, we drifted from painting to painting while pretending not to steal glances at Mr. Mull, swirling a glass, off to...

Not long ago, some friends and I wandered into a Friday-night art opening in Chelsea for the actor—and apparently the painter—Martin Mull. Like everyone else, we drifted from painting to painting while pretending not to steal glances at Mr. Mull, swirling a glass, off to...

[Martin Mull's] songs are a glossy and smoothly subtle blend of many influences shaped and channeled by a unique and whimsically droll point of view. Some of the songs are hymns in praise of such mundane subjects as eggs and Miami ("The only fish around are Nova Scotia lox") but mostly simply tell stories, exploring the narrow but fascinating range of ramifications spreading out from the dropping of an often tiny pebble of aberration into the placid waters of the American norm: a lover ...

[Martin Mull has] made some of the funniest, but most neglected, records around. The problem seems to be that Mull's field is musical parody, and the record-buying public does not appear to be ready for him yet. (p. 25)

The pop minstrels of the first years of the last decade were outraged idealists venting their passion in livid terms while educating a generation about social injustices, moral atrocities and emotional ambiguities. They determined the key in which the epic opera of the '60s' vast conflagration was played. Now, two years into the '70s, a new crop of musical essayists and commentators has emerged and if they set the tone for this decade as their predecessors did for theirs, it will be a v...