Sir Elton John and David Furnish
Talk Art
Russell Tovey and Robert Diament c/o Independent Talent
4.6 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 16 May 2024
⏱️ 94 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
We meet Sir Elton John and David Furnish to discuss their epic, brand new exhibition Fragile Beauty. Opening this weekend, Saturday, 18 May 2024 at the V&A South Kensington.
An unparalleled selection of the world's leading photographers, telling the story of modern and contemporary photography. Discover iconic images across subjects such as fashion, celebrity, reportage and the male body. This exclusive episode was recorded in person at the South of France home of Elton & David.
Showcasing over three hundred rare prints from 140 photographers, Fragile Beauty is a major presentation of twentieth- and twenty-first-century photography, on loan from the private collection of Sir Elton John and David Furnish. Selected from over seven thousand images, the photographs—many of which are on public display for the first time—are era-defining images that explore both the strength and vulnerability inherent to the human condition.
Over the past 30 years, Sir Elton John and David Furnish have carefully built an unrivalled collection of photography. Remarkable in its range and depth, it's a who's who of photographer and subject ranging across disciplines from fashion and film to landscape and reportage.
This interview is also included in the accompanying new book which presents 150 of the most important photographs from artists including Diane Arbus, Richard Avedon, Nan Goldin, David LaChapelle, Robert Mapplethorpe, Zanele Muholi, Helmut Newton, Cindy Sherman, Andy Warhol and Ai Weiwei. Featuring an afterword from Sam Taylor-Johnson and an in-depth interview with Sir Elton John and David Furnish by Russell Tovey and Robert Diament, as well as curatorial insights into themes within the collection - Fragile Beauty shares images that are beautiful, dynamic, striking, sometimes disturbing but always inspiring. Buy the book from Waterstone’s, the V&A gift shop or wherever you buy your books.
Follow @VAMuseum @EltonJohn @DavidFurnish
Buy tickets from the V&A, £20.
Exhibition runs from 18th May 2024 – 5th January, 2025
Victoria & Albert Museum, London
Special thanks to Elton & David, their collection curator Newell Harbin and their wonderful team at Rocket. Thank you to the incredible V&A curator Lydia Caston and the entire museum team including Rebecca Fortey.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Thank you very much for having us here with you guys. We are in your amazing house in the east in the south of France and we're surrounded by photography here. How long have you been in this house? |
| 0:15.6 | 1997, we bought it in 1996, we had it decorated and we moved in 1997 which was a rather traumatic summer for us because first of |
| 0:28.3 | all Johnny Bessati was assassinated and the beginning of the summer and we had to accommodate his boyfriend |
| 0:35.8 | Antonio and have him down here and bought him a puppy because it was such a |
| 0:40.0 | traumatic situation for him so we looked after him and at the end of the summer |
| 0:44.8 | Princess Diana was killed in the car crash. So we'll never forget that summer and it was |
| 0:50.7 | so sad because Johnny Vissache we were told him we were buying a house. |
| 0:55.6 | He hadn't seen a house, but we went around Sardinia and all those kind of islands |
| 1:00.6 | and we bought antiques. |
| 1:02.3 | The summer before we actually had the house and |
| 1:05.0 | furniture we furnished the house before we had the house yeah so that table there |
| 1:09.9 | as an example just beautiful old antique pieces we were combing little shops and so didn't yet and then a little bit in Milan as well. |
| 1:18.0 | Yeah and then also I had his flight detail in my diary when he was coming down that the week after he kind of moved in the week after he was assassinated. |
| 1:28.3 | So he was going to come down and stay with us. |
| 1:30.0 | But you can see Alton's soap to shoulder, Versace, the towel rails of Versace. |
| 1:35.0 | There's little Medusa clocks on the counters. |
| 1:38.0 | This is the first house, Project Dalton I did together, |
| 1:42.0 | and it was a real symbol of our tastes kind of coming together and also |
| 1:46.7 | the incredible impact Johnny was having in our lives as a friend and as a cultural |
| 1:53.0 | was so passionate about our world and moving you know from someone who kind of |
| 1:58.2 | started his business in neoclassicism in terms of inspirations he was |
| 2:02.0 | rapidly moving into the contemporary art world |
... |
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