On the Wall

"It is rare that there is something new to say about someone so famous," says Nicholas Cullinan, director of the National Portrait Gallery in London, which stages the exhibition Michael Jackson: On the Wall over the summer through Oct 21. "It opens up new avenues for thinking about art and identity, encourages new dialogue between artists, and invites audiences interested in popular culture and music to engage with contemporary art."

On the Wall, produced with the cooperation of the Michael Jackson Estate, brings together the works of more than 40 artists, which are drawn from public and private collections, including new works made especially for the exhibition. And extraordinarily for someone so publicly exposed and examined as Jackson, the majority of the pieces, both old and new, will be little known to their audience.

The tantalizing roster of featured artists includes some of the most important contemporary figures along with emerging talent. They range from Andy Warhol, Isaac Julien, Candice Breitz, Njideka Akunyili Crosby, Isa Genzken, Gary Hume, Rashid Johnson and David LaChapelle to Yan Pei-Ming, Kehinde Wiley, Catherine Opie, Rita Ackermann, Hank Willis Thomas and Jordan Wolfson.

Warhol, who had several chance meetings with the singer, wrote of his depiction, Michael Jackson 23, in his diaries. He created the portrait for a Time magazine cover in March 1984, marking the release of Jackson's album Thriller. "I finished the Michael Jackson cover," he writes. "I didn't like it, but the office kids did. Then the Time people came down, about 40 of them, and they stood around saying that it should increase newsstand sales. The cover should have had more blue, but they wanted this style."

Genzken, on the other hand, sees Jackson as a modern-day equivalent of David by Michelangelo. "David is what Michael Jackson always wanted to be like - all these cosmetic operations," she says. "He wanted to be the most beautiful man in the world." Her work is like an homage to Jackson, she explains. "It's the whole package, the whole thing. The way he talks, the way he moves, the way he does things. It's the admiration I have for him. It's the whole that is attractive to me."