My dad and I sat in the car in front of our house. We didn’t want to get out: Billie Jean was playing on the radio. I was too young to fully comprehend the adult nature of the song’s lyrics, so I sang, with no sense of embarrassment: “Billie Jean is not my lover, she’s just a girl who claims that I am the one.”
In 1983, Michael Jackson was “the one”: he had the number one album, the number one song, a groundbreaking music video and we saw him dance the moonwalk for the first time. But what was most special about this moment, and many of my other encounters with Jackson’s music over the years, was the shared experience with my parents, friends and the rest of the world.My visit to the National Portrait Gallery’s (NPG) exhibition Michael Jackson: On the Wall (until 21 October) was another shared experience. The people around me, ranging in age from eight to 80 and from a multitude of races and ethnicities, appeared entertained, captivated and intrigued by Jackson, as reflected through the prism of artworks produced by more than 40 artists.
I had been warned that the exhibition was not a biography of Jackson. In the most literal sense, this is true. It is about an artist, by artists, including works by Andy Warhol, Isa Genzken, Kehinde Wiley and Isaac Julian. The show feels more like a visual dialogue about artistic struggle than an attempt to put Jackson’s life and work into historical context. Many of the artists in the exhibition either worked with, or for, Jackson during his life, so a sense of compassion permeates the show.
Baring it all
The exhibition – through interpretation and the artworks – provides enough biographical detail to keep it grounded and accessible. The painter Donald Urquhart’s work, A Michael Jackson Alphabet (2017), which was commissioned for the show, gives you the facts of Jackson’s life on one canvas: A is for ABC – the Jackson Five hit song, G is for glove, N is for Neverland and X is for Xscape (Jackson’s posthumous album) – “escaping” was something Jackson could never do once he became a celebrity.
In addition, the US artist Faith Ringgold’s work, Who’s Bad, tells the pop star’s story via a quilt that frames Jackson’s legacy in the context of civil rights activists, such as Rosa Parks, Nelson Mandela and Martin Luther King. Of course, there are some works – such as the American artist and photographer Louise Lawler’s All Those Eyes, a photograph of the US artist Jeff Koons’ sculpture Michael Jackson and Bubbles – that take a self-reverential stance.
The exhibition does not avoid or gloss over the troubling aspects of Jackson’s life. The British artist Maggi Hambling’s painting juxtaposes a portrait of a frail and frozen Jackson, as he awaited trial on child molestation charges, with an image of his dancing feet.
Many works shed new light on Jackson’s contradictions, oddities and eccentricities. For example, the singer’s dinner jacket – a black leather motorcycle jacket with spoons and forks adorning it – is on display. The garment, created by the costume designer Michael Lee Bush, was commissioned by Jackson because he believed “cutlery is the one thing that every man, woman and child knows in the world”. Bush said that when Jackson wore it people always laughed and “Jackson loved that”.
What resonated most with me were the artworks that explored how we as individuals reacted to and appropriated Jackson to suit our own needs. A number of artworks in the show use video to examine the audiences at his concerts. Rodney McMillian’s 2003 video work, An Audience (excerpts from Michael Jackson’s 30th Anniversary Special, 2001), shows the audience in different stages of anticipation and excitement; Jackson is not in the frame. Through his work, McMillian explores the gaps in information between our “own understanding of [Jackson] in the context of ourselves”. Crossing boundaries
I have seen the NPG exhibition three times and on each visit I went into the small room presenting the work of the Romanian artist Dan Mihaltianu. In this installation, Jackson’s 1992 concert in Bucharest is projected on a narrow wall and surrounded by masks of the singer’s eyes alternating with faces of people from Romanian newspapers.
Mihaltianu is interested in the impact of the singer’s appearance on post-communist Romanian society. What I noticed was how visitors, including myself, unconsciously became part of that audience. Standing shoulder to shoulder in that tiny room, we were just as excited about the prospect of seeing Jackson arrive on stage and were transfixed by his taunting of the audience with frozen poses before bursting into dance.
In his 1985 essay Freaks and the American Ideal of Manhood the African-American writer and social critic James Baldwin wrote in the context of Jackson: “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 profound terrors and desires.”
The artist Dawn Mellor says of her 2007 portrait of Jackson as a zombie from the Thriller video: “My art is about imagining the kind of person who would make those horrible personal attacks on people … I’m satirising us.”
On the other hand, the South African artist Candice Breitz, whose King (2005) is a 16-channel video of Jackson fans from Germany and Austria singing songs from the Thriller album, says: “King says as much about a specific social and historical moment in Germany… as it does about Michael Jackson.” She explains that many participants identified with Jackson as a survivor who had overcome challenges in his life.
This takes me back to why I remember sitting in the car with my dad singing Billie Jean. Jackson bridged the age gap between me and my parents – my dad listened to him in childhood when Jackson was lead singer of the Jackson Five and I was watching him when he was a solo artist on MTV.
Until Thriller, I never discussed music at my predominantly white school. But suddenly, with Jackson crossing over from R&B charts to pop ones, his music was something that could be shared across race lines. And as the colour of Jackson’s skin changed and his nose got thinner, complex and painful issues about race identity became part of the public conversation – all for the better, in my opinion. But in the process, as encapsulated by the US photographer David LaChapelle’s work, Jackson may have become our martyr.
This exhibition will appeal to anyone interested in celebrity culture, race and gender politics in entertainment, or the challenges of being an artist. It is a must-see for those who know and love Jackson – the combination of music, videos and images presented throughout imbue the show with his spirit and energy.
Tonya Nelson is the director of museums and cultural programmes at UCL Culture, London
Project data
- Cost £500,000
- Main funder National Portrait Gallery
- Exhibition sponsors Boss; Sony Music
- Exhibition and graphic design National Portrait Gallery
- Interpretation National Portrait Gallery
- Audiovisual ADi Audiovisual
- Lighting Studio ZNA
- Display cases The Hub
- Exhibition ends 21 October
- Admission Free for Museums Association members
