Questions for Timothy Marvel Hull Regarding the Recent Work by Florence Tate, Editor of Art TransAtlanticism

Winter 2006

Q: Why are you using Gurdjieff as content?

A: I want to use Gurdjieff as an indicator or a catalyst for looking at the cult of personality and mythology of the mystic. I also want to use him as a jumping off place for telling a history, or re-interpreting the visual history of a spiritual or religious movement.

Q: What is the significance of the decoration and patterning?

A: The use of patterning has various meanings. First, I want to use the patterning as a metaphor for esoteric knowledge and obfuscation. I also want to use patterning as a narrative element, telling an indeterminate visual tale, that is closely or loosely connected to Orientalism or eclecticism.

Q: In what way are you trying to re-interpret or possibly re contextualize the history of the Gurdjieff movement?

A: I want to draw new connections, ideas of relationships that may not be apparent. There have been no real histories or definitive biographies of the Gurdjieff movement, and it is still a living ethos. I think that the artist is able and open to looking at a history and analyzing it as much as an author or documentarian. In fact, I feel that we are more liberated to draw tenuous or surreal links within a history, due to the large swath of grey area that the visual arts allow. It is my intention to synthesize documentary images with new, idiosyncratic designs and layouts to provoke a new dialogue about a specific history as well as about making art.

Q: So, part of this project is about art making itself?

A: I hope so! I think that the process of making art is very important. I also want to draw links between the process of an artist making art, and the process of a mystic making prophesies and theories. Gurdjieff is the perfect example of a man, an artist and a mystic and I would like to tap into that, use it and learn from it. My process of intricate patterns and designs that reference various cultures and sensibilities is deeply rooted in a humanist and eclectic worldview, one, which someone like Gurdjieff spoke about. The project is also about the image or an image, as a macro issue and as a micro one.

Q: Is this project celebratory or critical of Gurdjieff?

A: Neither. I do not intend to have the project proselytize for Gurdjieff or celebrate his ideas. Moreover, I want the project to look at or use his ideas as inspiration for art making. He was a very strange man and his ideas and image have been very influential on the 1960πs new age movement and beyond. I want to look at the influence Gurdjieff has had as well as the milieu that surrounded him in the early 1920πs when the new age movement was comprised mostly of intellectuals and artists.

Q: What was the nature of the early Gurdjieff movement and how have you been highlighting it?

A: Some of the most ardent early followers of Gurdjieff were American lesbian writers and actresses living in Paris in the 1920s. For some reason, these women were attracted to Gurdjieff, probably because of his ultimate outsider status, or his rigorous, esoteric beliefs, but whatever it is, there was some sort of sexual politic going on there and it has not yet been looked at. A lot of the art works I have made from this project have looked at the relationship between Gurdjieff and these women, the mystery of it and the beauty of it. There was something very surreal and avant-garde about the Fourth Way in Paris in the 1920s.

Q: Does this project have a completion? How will you know when it is done?

A: When I feel that I have looked at the important questions concerning Gurdjieff and the history of his movement and that I have created various works of art that successfully answer these questions or provide new insights into the cult of personality, the mystic or spiritual leader as well as the nature of the new age movement. I have already begun thinking about new projects that deal with similar issues and tones, but with a completely new subject matter. It is not all about Gurdjieff, heπs just one of many other fanciful, weird and prophetic humans who have not been looked at in an artful way.

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