Marlon Mullen

b. 1963 · Richmond, California, USA

He paints the covers of art magazines until the words melt into shape and colour, and the art world he repaints has ended up hanging him on its own walls.

The life

Mullen was born in 1963 in Richmond, California, where he still works. Autistic and communicating largely without speech, he has kept a studio practice for decades at the NIAD Art Center, a Richmond studio supporting artists with developmental disabilities. The 2019 Whitney Biennial brought him wide critical acclaim, and in 2024 he became the first developmentally disabled artist to be given a solo exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

The work

Acrylic on canvas, taking the covers of Artforum and other art publications as source material: logos thicken into blocks of colour, text fragments into concrete poetry, and the page becomes a bold, rhythmic abstraction. His work is held by MoMA, the Whitney Museum of American Art, SFMOMA, the Studio Museum in Harlem and the High Museum of Art in Atlanta.

Why we love them

The neatest reversal in contemporary art. He painted the gatekeepers’ own magazines until the gates swung open.

Go deeper

• Marlon Mullen at the Outsider Art Fair
• Marlon Mullen on Wikipedia
• Where to see outsider art, our full list of museums and collections.
• The glossary, if any of the terms here are new.

Kindred spirits

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