In this episode of “Travels with a Curator,” we visit the world-famous Westminster Abbey in London, with Xavier F. Salomon, Peter Jay Sharp Chief Curator. Xavier shares connections between Westminster Abbey and the Frick through an examination of the life of General John Burgoyne, a playwright, parliamentarian, and military officer buried in the Abbey’s north cloister. Sir Joshua Reynolds’s portrait of Burgoyne was acquired by The Frick Collection in 1943.
Monocle 24 checks in on Switzerland’s plans to further ease coronavirus restrictions and ask whether the country is setting an example that others should follow.
Plus: the weekend’s newspapers and top stories. From Milan: Salone highlights, interviews and a daily running guide.
Music by Cinematic Orchestra – To Build a home
Drone Operator – Sam Gillespie
Drone Camera Operator – Jack Fisher
Graphic design – Lucia Garcia
Since lockdown began, I’ve taken my camera with me on my daily dog walks. I wanted to try and capture the atmosphere and make a record of the effects COVID 19 is having on the city I was born in, and the city I call home.
An exercise in light painting and parallax displacement to apply a 3D (or 2.5D) element to a series of still photographs captured after nightfall.
This film is comprised entirely of still images. All motion achieved in post production. The only time lapse shots are the star trails. All other shots are typically comprised of between 3 and 5 exposures of the same subject, but with different lighting in each, then blended together or transitioned between to give the effect of seamless motion.
The COVID19 pandemic forced me to put a number of projects on hold. Being unable to shoot anything new I took the opportunity to look back through my astrophotography and nightscape work from the past couple of years. I put this film together as a reminder of what exists outside my four walls and so others can enjoy the wonders of the night sky from their solitary confines.
Photographed at the following locations:
Arches National Park, Utah
Capitol Reef National Park, Utah
Joshua Tree National Park, California
Llanthony Priory, Brecon Beacons National Park, Wales
Dunraven Bay, South Wales
Dartmoor National Park, England
Alex Hillkurtz was born in England and grew up in California where he is a renowned storyboard artist for feature films, television, and commercials. His film credits include “Argo”, “Almost Famous”, “It’s Complicated”, and many others.
Alex currently lives in Paris with his film editor wife, Tiffany, and enjoys discovering the hidden corners of the city that sketching and plein air painting allow. He uses the language of cinema to inform his images, moving beyond what one sees, and depicting what he wants others to see. He believes that in our too-crowded lives, sketching and plein air painting invite us to move at a more deliberate pace… a true sense of place, and sometimes unexpected stories are revealed.
A look ‘beneath’ Titian’s canvases reveals the tweaks and changes he made as he worked over four hundred years ago. Find out more with Restorer Jill Dunkerton.
From Switzerland to South America, from the South of England to the coast of Maine, they have been moved by mountains, oceans, deserts, plains, lakes and forests — we hope you will find their art every bit as stirring as we do
Russia’s pine forests
Siverskaya, located 70km south of St Petersburg, was a popular summer retreat for Russian city-dwellers in the 19th century. It was in Siverskaya and its neighbouring woods that Ivan Shishkin — one of Russia’s most famous landscape painters, dubbed ‘the patriarch of forests’ — created some of his best-known works.
Peak of Mount Emei (1958) – Huang Junbi
Mount Emei, China
Mount Emei in Sichuan, southwest China, is the highest of China’s four sacred Buddhist mountains, reaching to 3,099 metres. The mountain is a place of pilgrimage, where dozens of temples and monasteries have been erected, and has been an inspiration for artists for centuries.
Wednesday 22 April, 2020 marks 50 years since the declaration of the first Earth Day in 1970 — an occasion on which to reflect on our natural world, and perhaps take action to help sustain it. In celebration of this anniversary, we look back on a selection of artists for whom nature — and our planet — has been an inspiration and guide.
The Museum’s gardens were originally set aside for future expansion of the building, but when money ran out they became an outside space for the public. They haven’t just been for show – over the years they’ve been a burial ground for whales, they’ve hosted a secret war bunker, and they’ve been converted to a farm complete with eight Sussex pigs.
The Natural History Museum in London is home to over 80 million specimens, including meteorites, dinosaur bones and a giant squid.
Paying tribute to a racing icon and sporting legend. Rest in peace, Sir Stirling Moss. We’ll miss you.
Sir Stirling Craufurd Moss, OBE was a British Formula One racing driver. An inductee into the International Motorsports Hall of Fame, he won 212 of the 529 races he entered across several categories of competition and has been described as “the greatest driver never to win the World Championship”.