I wasn’t going to attend this exhibition, I’ve no idea why, but it simply was not on my radar to attend but I am glad I found myself in London with some free time to play away at the V&A which is my favourite museum in the UK. This is a stunning and rich and beautiful and culturally relevant and diverse private collection that we can only hope to have a fraction of one day. Elton John is a guardian of history this is quite obvious from this exhibition; he never wants us to forget the pivotal moments that have coloured our lifetimes, from the Beatles to the Black Lives Matter protests in the US, to Marilyn Monroe to the death to Robert Kennedy in 1968 which was documented by photographer Boris Yaro when he captured the dying Senator after his speech. These are poignant images of our time, before our time, that will remain long after we are all gone.
The exhibition brings to public come of the private collections of Elton John and his husband David Furnish. FRAGILE BEAUTY aptly shows, through these moments of history, the fragility of our history as a human race, how everything can be razed to the ground in the fraught moments of life which we find ourselves, and in other respects how beauty shines through in every aspect we do not expect.
Some of these images we are very familiar with like the photograph of Dovima with elephants as shot by Avedon, Helmut Newtons’s Elsa Peretti’s bunny picture set against the New York skyline, The Beatles, Marilyn, even one Miss Piggy shot by Norman Parkinson… we have seen them a million times and they are embedded in our subconscious but in the grandness of these moments are the unexpected images like those taken during the civil rights movement in America juxtaposed with those taken in the summer of 2020 during the protests sparked by the murder of George Floyd at the hands of the police. The one of the young woman about to be led away by police in riot gear, she in a summer dress and ballet shoes, not resisting, not protesting; the great juxtaposition captured here up close is reverential because we were there, we saw this unfold on social media. There are pictures also of the white and coloured only drinking fountains in the Jim Crow era south along side the worn image of the American flag. Moussa N’diaye the Senegalese wrestler who died earlier this year, at sea, whilst making the perilous crossing to Europe, is captured by Harley Weir as he prepared to wrestle; he is taking a shower in goat’s milk for luck. This was one of the more profound images in the exhibition because it straddles that line of fragility and beauty; a strong man whose vulnerability is only quelled by a ritual using goat milk; power and submission all in one. History is documented here; The Falling Man from 9/11, the killing of Jeffrey Miller in 1970 during the war protests, and the aforementioned death of Robert Kennedy with waiter Juan Romero kneeling over the dying Senator’s body as if to protect him still from the vestiges of death or to let him know he will not traverse this facet of life alone… it captured all the things and evokes life and death in black and white.
And just before we leave the exhibition we are stirred back to the beauty with Tyler Mitchell’s portrait of a Black Boy with a bee on his nose titled Simply Fragile right next to the self portrait of Zanele Muholl, Labo I, the artist uses a blanket as a headdress, shot in black and white, to draw attention to the struggles of those who continue to be othered, and discriminated against in society; an apt parting image of wisdom right there and so it stays with us.
Bombast it has, iconic it gives, it is the many stories that tie the world together from different facets, fashion, form and function, race relations and protest, other, humour and heart, the constant cycle that is life, sex and the stages in between, the naked body and the freedoms we take for granted,