It was about time! Muddying your influences in order to be different, being different in order to say something new, and even say something refractory, but without ponderousness—if only because no one would take you seriously, commitment is dead and buried. And then discovering you really are influential; delicate, yet important. The multifaceted work of Mike Mills—graphic designer, director, artist— bubbles from the spring of Generation X, but don’t turn up your nose. The path may be sketchy, but that’s what the ‘90s were, outside of the establishment, beyond the art of success, just before the iPod, already Lost in Translation. Sonic Youth, Beastie Boys, Air, Los Angeles, Tokyo, Marc Jacobs, Aaron Rose, the Alleged Gallery, Thumbsucker… Maybe that’s the real mainstream outside of the kunsthalles. The beautiful underdog has got a retrospective monograph; loser, my foot.