Hull’s art and curations tangle with the mysteries of the world to uncover hidden significance, from Egyptian legends, to the Italian Renaissance, to petite sailboats and Swatch watches. Intertwined with an acclaimed community of New York and Los Angeles artists, Hull’s curiosity serves as a thermometer of relevance, and this latest exhibit is a testament to its accuracy.

From his apartment in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, Hull gave FLAUNT.com the following exclusive interview on a chilling 22-degree winter afternoon, in the hopes that the world will re-discover the forgotten magic of album covers.

 

Paul Mpagi Sepuya reimagines Kelis Flesh Tone (2010). Color Photograph, 12 x 12 inches. Courtesy of the Artist and Envoy Enterprises.

 

Colby Bird reimagines Grace Jones Night Clubbing (2010). Mixed media, 12 x 12 inches. Courtesy of the artist and CRG Gallery.

 

 

 

Kadar Brock reimagines NEU! NEU!75 (2010). Spray paint, house paint, and marker on canvas, 12 x 12 inches. Courtesy of the artist and Thierry Goldberg Projects

 

 

FLAUNT.COM INTERVIEW WITH TIMOTHY HULL 1/6/2010

FLAUNT: Tell me about the concept itself and where it came from. Where did the idea begin?

TH: It actually began in Los Angeles because I was asked to curate the summer group show at Taylor De Cordoba, which is where I show. And Heather Taylor asked me to think up some cool idea and I said, ‘Oh, I’ve always wanted to curate a show of artists doing book covers’, and so the gestation of it was that it originated with artists making variations or reimagining their favorite book covers. Like a big summer group show, and I had a lot of my New York artist friends in it and I put some L.A. artists in it and it was kind of a sleeper hit. The L.A. Times did a whole page in print on it  and the L.A. Times book review section did a story on it and some blogs did a story on it and people loved idea of artists doing book covers. 

And the show I would say was a resounding success. And then maybe a year later my friend who is a curator at BAM—the Brooklyn Academy of Music also has an art section to it—he said, 'I’ve always liked your idea for the book cover show, would you ever consider doing an album cover, like an LP cover show?' And I was like, "I don’t know, you know I already did the book cover show and I don’t want to repeat that in a way." But then when I started thinking about it . . . last summer I bought a new record player and I rediscovered all my old LPs and my parents’ LPs and I loved the size of them and the shape and feel of them and I said to my friend Dave, ‘You know what, let me take you up on that offer of curating that show. Let’s do it.’ And he was like, ‘Great. Invite as many artists as you want.’ I invited 30 artists and 28 were able to do it.

FLAUNT: And how did you come up with the list of artists to include in the show?

TH: The whole idea of the show to me was that it’s a community show. I really like to curate in a community type format meaning these are the people that I’m growing with and coming up with, like these are my friends or these are people I went to grad school with at Parsons. I mean I personally know everyone in the show, but I didn’t just choose artists because they are my friends, but I chose artists that I thought would be challenged by this. A lot of them were in the Cover Versions show in Los Angeles so I wanted to see what they would do with album covers. It runs the gamut but it really comes down to: these are the people I support emotionally, conceptually, and in all regards.

FLAUNT: When we talk about album covers, what does that mean to you? What is an album cover?

TH: I’ve always had vinyl records in my life. In childhood, growing up, and in high school. I always played with my parents’ records. To me, the album covers function as a work of art in the same way as a book cover. It’s something you collect, something you hold. There’s an aura-[like] quality to them. Meaning an aural, you feel the sensation. You collect them; you display them; you can let people borrow them. They say something about the culture and the time they were created and they say something about you, the possessor of them. I think there’s a whole language there which you completely lost through digital music, and it’s a huge lamentation of mine—although I love MP3s—is the loss of the album cover. It’s the same with the Kindle and the eBook. Conceptually the idea of the eBook is fantastic and I support it but I really do lament the loss of the printed word and the paper and the collecting of books and the attractiveness and the sensation it gives you. I don’t know if that’s worth losing at the gaining of convenience. I don’t think convenience is worth the loss of the quality of the work.

I would put down my MP3 player if that was what God wanted and I would go back to just records and I would be perfectly  fine with that. As much as I love the convenience of the MP3 I feel like I could still live without it.

FLAUNT: At some point you will have to put your foot down and decide which artists and authors are important enough for you to actually buy a physical copy of whatever it is that they produce.

TH: But what happens when they stop making it? I’m afraid that one day maybe in our lifetime people will be cutting albums and writing books and there won’t be covers!

FLAUNT: Oh my.

TH: Ostensibly, I feel like that’s a reality. I know I sound very reactionary. I always thought that one of the greatest, most naïve, quotes I ever heard was, "Don’t judge a book by it’s cover." [Laughs]. On one hand it is very wise of course, but on the other hand only a complete and total idiot would  think that appearances don’t matter.

Cover Version, the original title actually, for the one I did in LA, was By Its Cover, like don’t judge a book . . . but then it just didn’t seem as appropriate as Cover Version, but Cover Version works more, actually, for albums. Because bands do cover versions of Beatles songs. Get it? Bands do cover versions. The idea of cover versions is great. I love it when bands do cover versions of a song because they get to re-imagine it, the get to re-interpret it with the bare bones of that song, and this is the same thing. I’m asking artists to do cover versions of their favorite album cover.

FLAUNT: How come you decided to go behind the scenes and curate a show?

TH: Because I don’t like to be one thing. To me the art world is not just me in my studio painting. To me, the art world is a big fun community and I want to be involved in a lot of different aspects of it. Primarily, I am just an artist in my studio making artwork and showing it, but I love having different levels of vision and curating is just another level of expounding a thought or a vision and also just helping everyone out. I like the idea of everyone helping everyone out. So I do a show and I have people in it, and people do a show and I’m in it, and we’re all in it together. And I just like being with all aspects of the art community.

FLAUNT: It’s more of a leadership role.

TH: Yeah, there is a semblance of taking a bull by a horn. It’s like the old adage: be the change you want to be in the world. So if there’s not a show that you want to see, then put the show on.  I’m going to make the opportunity. And sometimes I put myself into the show and this time I didn’t put myself into the show simply because I didn’t feel like it.

FLAUNT: If you had to choose a favorite album cover, which album would you choose?

TH: That’s a good question because a bunch of people have asked me that and I’ve been like, ‘Uhhh, I don’t know; I didn’t think about it.' But off the top of my head I think I would be most excited if The Cure asked me to do an album cover because The Cure and The Smiths have been my favorite bands forever, so I mean it probably would have been one of them, or I could have been a real jerk and done something obscure like Florentine Concert Music of the 14^th Century, which is my favorite album right now. I just got this great record of Florentine Renaissance Concert Music. It’s very simple; it’s just a person singing and a flute, or a drum and a flute. It was recorded in the '50s or '60s. I got it in this old record shop. I love listening to it in my room with the lights off. My thing right now is: I want to leave New York and move the 14^th century. Pack my bags and move from NYC to the 14^th century and live with Lorenzo De Medici.

FLAUNT: Would you still be an artist?

TH: Oh yeah! What a great time to be an artist. Much better than right now, even. There was so much more going on in terms of expansion. You think, right now, 'Oh, artists can do whatever they want.' Well, at that time, artists could do whatever they wanted, they just didn’t know what to do. But there was still a great sense of expansion and freedom and the world was totally open and possible. I think that the Florence Renaissance of the 14^th century was totally bonkers and crazy.

FLAUNT: So I take it you went and bought that album then went and started studying Florence history?

TH: Oh no,  I lived in Florence for about four years. I did most of my undergraduate in Florence, Italy and have gone back there and worked there for a couple of years. And I studied the Florence Renaissance and Art History, so this has been an ongoing thing. But I’m really into it right now because I just got this album and I’m having a little bit of a renaissance unintended.

FLAUNT: In browsing your name online I ran into: Egypt. It seems that you had a run-in with Egypt.

TH: I had a long run-in with Egypt!

FLAUNT: Would you tell me about that and how that lead to where you are now and whether that’s a part of the picture today?

TH: Egypt is still a very important part of my thought process. I started making work about Egypt, then I went to Egypt, and I kept making work about Egypt. So I kind of have my pre-Egypt-trip work and my post-Egypt-trip work. And right now I haven’t worked on anything specifically about Egypt but the spirit of that ancient mystery still lingers in my work. My  work looked generally like it was about ancient Egypt, but it was more about  the Victorian obsession with ancient Egypt. Egyptology. What it means [for the British] to have "discovered Egypt" and the language around that, and the images surrounding that. And also [my work dealt wit] the New Age appropriation of Egypt because New Age science and pseudo-science adopted so much iconography and imagery from Egypt and I took a little bit of a cynical tact with that.

FLAUNT: When you actually visited Egypt after studying it so much, what was your reaction?

TH: I guess I had a bit of a fantastical idea of Egypt before I went there. I’d been to the Middle East before, and I’d been to Africa a few times, so I knew what I was getting into, but what I wasn’t prepared for was how Disney-like Egypt is. There’s almost an invisible wall between you and everything there. It’s all look but don’t touch. And it’s an extremely mediated experience. The tour guides are government affiliated and certified and they only tell you a certain narrative and they get you in and out of there with an electric cattle prod. So I became a little bit cynical of Egypt as a packaged tour and everything that gets lost in that translation. So, then I did a show in Italy after that that had an Italian title with a translation of How Egypt Ruined My Life. It was about how Egypt is just this money-making tourism spot and go there if you want to spend a lot of money and be fleeced. It definitely was on the cynical side.

FLAUNT: When was that?

TH: That was 2008.

FLAUNT: Ok, I’ve got here, in 2007, The Swarm of Possible Meanings Surrounding The Ancient Pyramids.

TH: Yeah, that was my big pro-Egyptology show I did at Freight + Volume, I was like, 'Yeah! Egyptology!' Isn’t this fun and weird.  Now I’ve just opened up my art practice to be more about Western thoughts about the ancient world images of antiquity and also the uses of pop culture and Greek and Roman in pop culture. So it opened up more conceptually.

FLAUNT: You seem interested in mystery and lured by mysterious things. So, what currently has your eye?

TH: I do have in mind, in the future, making work about the Florentine Renaissance. But I think even about the Florentine Renaissance, because I’m doing a lot of work about passing through time. I’ve done drawings of Roman ruins in Rome; I’ve done drawings of Roman Ruins in the Middle East. Looking at the diaspora of the Roman Empire. I’m thinking a lot about Greece vs. Rome. I’m also thinking a lot about the IRA and the struggles in Northern Ireland. And sailboats. And Swatch watches.

FLAUNT: Swatch watches?

TH: Yeah [Laughs]. I’ve been doing a series of paintings of Swatch watch faces that point at the international quality of Swatch watches being the Swiss timepiece that’s kind of the Coca-Cola of timepieces that kind of has a Warhol pop to it.

FLAUNT: What about sailboats?

TH: Well, sailboats are the international symbol of adventure. And I have a little sailboat of my own that I go sailing on every weekend in the spring, summer, and fall. I keep it an hour outside of NYC on the Hudson River. Its 19 feet. It’s a little Cape Dory Typhoon Weekender. It’s absolutely the most beautiful thing you’ve ever seen in your life. It has teak on it; it’s a fiberglass hull with teak combing and a teak toe-rail. I’ve spent a lot of time restoring this beautiful boat. It was in bad shape when I got it for nothing. I get compliments on it all the time.

FLAUNT: Do you know how to sail?

TH: I’ve been progressively learning. I’ve been around boats in different capacities all my life but I’ve been progressively learning over the past few years. But since this boat has fallen into my life, I’ve gone all the way and I’m an "extreme sailing person".

FLAUNT: Do you have any pictures of yourself on that boat?

TH: [Laughs] Of course I do!

                                                                          

Curator Timothy Hull (LEFT) on his Cape Dory Typhoon Weekender

 

FLAUNT: Is there anything else that you would like to say about the exhibit?

TH: I think that this exhibit is important because of the impending loss of album cover art, and in a way I feel that this show is to raise awareness of the importance and influence of album cover art. And it’s cool that it’s at Brooklyn Academy of Music. It’s such an old institution. It’s the perfect marriage of art and music; I think it’s a match made in heaven.