Exhibition starts March 2019 Michael Jackson comes to Bundeskunsthalle
BONN · The exhibition "Michael Jackson: On the Wall" has already opened in London. Next year, the show will be coming to Bonn with more than 70 works of art on the "King of Pop", some of them rather unusual.
"Sometimes a good subject matter comes your way - and this was something that interested me,” said Rein Wolfs, artistic director of the Bundeskunsthalle (Federal Art Museum), outing himself as a fan of Michael Jackson and talking about the big London exhibition which will also come to Bonn. The exhibit opened yesterday in the National Portrait Gallery, with works from 48 artists. At the end of the year, the exhibition will be handed over to the Grand Palais in Paris. From March 22 to July 14, 2019, the “King of Pop” makes a stop in Bonn before traveling on to Finland. The Bonn exhibit is expected to be bigger than the London one, reveals the director.
“Icons of change”
For Wolfs, there is a direct path from performance legend Marina Abramovic, a star on the arts scene, and whose works are currently on display in the Bundeskunsthalle, to Michael Jackson, or “even Goethe and Beethoven.” These are personalities who “work to transform, they are icons of change". For 2019, the triad in the Bundeskunsthalle is called Beethoven-Goethe-Jackson. The poet and the “King of Pop” open the prominent round, which will then culminate mid-December in the major Beethoven exhibit as a preview for the anniversary year 2020.
It is the first time that pop music will move into the Bundeskunsthalle. For Wolfs, this is about showing another kind of art. Wolfs has honored the art of dance, has shown Karl Lagerfeld, and with Goethe will make a foray into literature and with Beethoven into classical music.
"Michael Jackson is a phenomenon," says an enthused Wolfs, "I grew up with him and with Madonna." He's only a few years younger than the “King of Pop”, he reveals. "I liked 'Thriller' and 'Billie Jean' " and I found the project 'United Artists for Africa' terrific. Jackson embodies a new African-American awareness of Martin Luther King, says Wolfs.
Looking forward to bizarre art
Bonn visitors to the art museum can look forward to some very bizarre art: Kehinde West depicts Jackson as King Philip II on horseback. The pop legend then appears as an “American Jesus” in the year of his death, 2009, in a picture from David LaChapelle. The cult of his personality plays a big role in the exhibit. Works from Andy Warhol to Keith Haring, Jeff Koons and Paul McCarthy all pay tribute to the pop legend, who would have turned 60 on August 29, 2018.
Wolfs wants to create a cleverly designed presentation. "I want to create an immersive situation," he promises, "you should be in the middle of it." A spectacle of architecture, movement, images and sound. "The visitor will be left to wonder - which is a concert recording, which is a work of video art?" Wolfs says, "It's about the ability to transform - Michael Jackson and Madonna have changed the perception of the world."
(Orig. text: Thomas Kliemann / Translation: Carol Kloeppel)
