The Lodestar

To commemorate Michael Jackson's 60th birth anniversary, an exhibition On The Wall explores the genius - and frailties - of the music legend. Bulan Lahiri writes on why and how MJ is still relevant today, almost a decade after he passed on

On the 29th of this month, Michael Jackson would have turned 60. The significance of the 'occasion' is likely to have made the controversial performer, who repeatedly said 'I am Peter Pan', unhappy. For someone who believed "growing old is the ugliest thing", the event would doubtless have unleashed the media storm that had become a hallmark of his almost-bizarre life, part of which he himself may have orchestrated given his love-hate relationship with publicity.
With his craving for immortality, what is likely to have made him happy, however, is the fact that, almost a decade after his death, the fascination with Michael Jackson continues unabated. Increasingly regarded as one of the greatest musical icons of all time, a long line-up of high-profile events are set to mark the diamond jubilee of his birth. One of the most notable tributes to the extraordinary life of the King of Pop is perhaps Michael Jackson: On The Wall - an exhibition that is running at London's prestigious National Portrait Gallery (NPG).
Curated by Nicholas Cullinan, the NPG's new director, this landmark show explores the superstar's continuing influence on some of the most famous names in contemporary art across the world, and on several generations of artists. Jackson's sway on music, music videos, dance, choreography and fashion have been widely acknowledged, but his impact on art has, till now, been an untold story.
Few know, for instance, that since Andy Warhol first used his image in 1984, Jackson has become the most depicted cultural figure in visual history. The legendary portrait, where the King of Pop Art met the King of Pop, was commissioned by Time magazine for its cover story and portrayed Jackson in a red jacket from his Thriller video. This is one of the key exhibits, the other being a never-before-displayed portrait commissioned by Jackson himself just months before he died but completed posthumously: The Equestrian Portrait of King Philip II (Michael Jackson) by Kehinde Wiley. The New York-based painter, known for his portraiture of Barack Obama as well as men and women of colour in his signature naturistic and revisionist style, draws on the visual vocabulary of European art history to both question stereotypes of identity and representation, and provoke debate about the role of black people in society. Michael and Wiley apparently alighted on an idea which emulated Peter Paul Ruebens' famous portrait of King Philip of Spain, resulting in a painting where Jackson sits atop a horse in the guise of a monarch in a brazenly-kitsch reinterpretation of the classical masters whose works enshrine a world where rich, straight, white men rule. Jackson's 'megalomania' allegedly often took the form of having himself depicted as a King or archangel but, says Cullinan, one needs to remember that this was a poor black boy who transcended his impossible origins.
New works created especially for the exhibition include a line drawing by Michael Craig-Martin based on the image used by Rolling Stone magazine in April 1971 when Michael was one of the youngest people ever to be featured on its cover. This is a picture, according to the artist, of a beautiful little boy, an unambiguously-black child star whose subsequent life would become a sad and hopeless search for a childhood he never really experienced. The other, As We See You: Dreams of Jand 2017 by Njideka Akunyili Crosby, fuses collage, photo transfers, drawings and painting to depict an imaginary interior of a Nigerian home. For Crosby, international icons had, so far, been white British or American stars with their associative imagery of all-things-revered emanating from Western culture till Jackson, for the first time, brought the aspiration of being black and an icon within the realms of possibility.
Black or white? Preoccupation with colour and identity politics is a theme that runs through the exhibition (as it did in MJ's life, culminating in Oprah's famous question: "Michael, is your skin lighter because you don't like being black?"). Ironically, while we'll never know for sure if he did deliberately attempt to change the colour of his skin, he did achieve the implicit metaphor contained therein (moving from disempowered to super-empowered) by surmounting every barrier of race and creed, establishing, like the line from his song: "I'm not going to spend my life being a colour".
Lorraine O'Grady's series of four diptychs The First and Lasts of the Modernists (Charles and Michael) is an interesting take on mirroring, where she likens Jackson to the French poet Baudelaire: two masters of their art, one attempting to explain the new world he was living in to those around him, while the other dreamt of uniting the entire world through his music!
Another thought-provoking exhibit, David LaChapelle's An Illuminating Path employs religious iconography from American Jesus to show aspects of Jackson's life that the artist felt were almost-biblical, depicting him as saint and martyr. Also, photo-collages by Todd Gray, Michael's official photographer in the Thriller era, include a shot of Jackson in Disneyland with Mickey Mouse where the singer purportedly confessed to Todd that he wanted to be as famous as the Disney character!
On The Wall persuades 48 established and emerging artists to explore why they are drawn to Jackson as a subject through some 100 works of art. Cullinan told WKND, "On The Wall takes an entirely new and quite radical approach by exploring the cultural impact of a unique figure through contemporary art. It is rare that there is something new to say about someone so famous but, here, that is the case. The exhibition will open up new avenues for thinking about art and identity, encourage new dialogue between artists.. and, like its subject, be inclusive in its appeal and break down barriers."
The exhibition has obviously struck a chord among commoners and celebrities alike, with even Madonna dropping by to pay homage to her late friend on a fleeting visit to London. A quote from James Baldwin may sum up why: "The Michael Jackson cacophony is fascinating in that it is not about Jackson at all. He will not swiftly be forgiven for having turned so many tables. Freaks are called freaks and are treated as they are treated - in the main, abominably - because they are human beings who cause to echo, deep within us, our most precious terrors and desires".
Michael Jackson's Off The Wall, released in 1979, won him his first Grammy. Considered one of the best disco albums, it was placed at No 80 on the Rolling Stone list of the world's 'Definitive 200 albums of all time' in 2003. Its lyrical themes relate to escapism, liberation, loneliness, hedonism and romance. Like his creation, Michael Jackson was perhaps an indefinable mélange - 'a walking contradiction, partly truth and partly fiction', impossible to pin down or pigeonhole, hauntingly unknowable. And therein possibly lies the answer to why he was, and remains, an enigma and an object of fascination for artists and fans alike.
Michael Jackson: On The Wall runs at the National Portrait Gallery till October 21, and then travels to Paris, Bonn and Espoo in Finland. If you're in London anytime before that, go see it. By turning the mirror on the man and the myth, the music that broke boundaries and crossed barriers, fame and frailty, image and reality, Neverland and its moonwalker "star that can never die - it just turns into a smile and melts back into the cosmic music, the dance of life" - the exhibition's power perhaps lies in its ability to challenge our notions of identity and normalcy, and provoke us to confront some of the masks we wear.
wknd@khaleejtimes.com