Devo was an art collective posing as a band, a Dada ensemble parodying the pretentions of rock music. Devo’s bracing subversion, with its critique of conservative and liberal values, of faith in science and progress, of the social conditioning that reduces people to automatons of consumption, was packaged in forms that were familiar yet strange. Mark Mothersbaugh, the art school graduate at the center of the project, is the subject of Myopia’s fascinating interviews and essays. The coffee-table book devotes many pages to photos of Mothersbaugh’s visual art, including photomorphing, postcards and printmaking.
