Chiaroscuro

December 10, 2009 3:59 PM

Michael Jackson heals the world
posted by Artw (39 comments total)

This FPP seems like it needs more words and thus, wont be here very long.

So here's some Josh Fenderman all up in yr grillz
posted by Senor Cardgage at 4:03 PM on December 10, 2009

So...Michael Jackson is a cathemeral pedophile?
posted by Inspector.Gadget at 4:04 PM on December 10, 2009

The "Field of Dreams" is not all it seems - 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.
posted by fire&wings at 4:05 PM on December 10, 2009 [3 favorites]

I always suspected he was related to E.T.
posted by bearwife at 4:05 PM on December 10, 2009

Sometimes the background is as interesting as the foreground.
posted by The Whelk at 4:14 PM on December 10, 2009

Do you know where your kids are?
posted by Balisong at 4:17 PM on December 10, 2009

Is this it?
posted by davebush at 4:18 PM on December 10, 2009

I just remember the "Heal The World" poster was in the "happiness" hut in the second Addams Family movie. It was scary then, and it's scary now.
posted by inthe80s at 4:18 PM on December 10, 2009

Hey, did you guys know that Michael Jackson was kind of weird?

He was!
posted by billysumday at 4:18 PM on December 10, 2009 [2 favorites]

Please don't delete this post. A picture is worth a thousand words.
posted by hermitosis at 4:19 PM on December 10, 2009

Ugh. It sucks when people have enough money to bring their craziness to fruition.
posted by jefficator at 4:21 PM on December 10, 2009

This is sad :/
posted by june made him a gemini at 4:25 PM on December 10, 2009

The links from fire&wings are part of Paul Sheer's photo tour of the Neverland auction items, covered previously.
posted by filthy light thief at 4:26 PM on December 10, 2009

The triptych is actually kind of awesome IMO.
posted by Sys Rq at 4:27 PM on December 10, 2009

really, wow
posted by ilovecomix at 4:29 PM on December 10, 2009

Senor Cardgage: "This FPP seems like it needs more words and thus, wont be here very long."

There are no words.
posted by brundlefly at 4:31 PM on December 10, 2009

Similar gallery with more information on the Telegraph. ABC has more on the history of Nordhal's work with Jackson. Starcasm has the same images, but larger. Nordahl's message after Jackon's death (plus a few more pictures Nordhal made for Jackson).

Related: Nordhal paints a lot of western scenes: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5
posted by filthy light thief at 4:38 PM on December 10, 2009 [1 favorite]

There are no words.
posted by brundlefly

We should have sent a poet. No words... no words...
posted by Babblesort at 4:44 PM on December 10, 2009

I am the thinker, the thinking, the thought

I am the seekr the seeking, the sought

I am the dewdrop, the sunshine, the storm

I am the phenomena, the field, the form

I am the the desert, the ocean, the sky

I am the Primeval Self in you and I

Michael Jackson

...that is one scary poem. So is "Michael Jackson" the signature, or the last line?
posted by Artw at 4:44 PM on December 10, 2009 [2 favorites]

Nordahl's got a great beard.
posted by box at 4:50 PM on December 10, 2009

I wish there were more insanely rich people out there looking for personal portraitists, food tasters, and other trappings of royalty of old. I would be overjoyed to be a professional court jester. In fact, if any insanely wealthy people would like to hire me to sit around their house dressed in jester clothes openly mocking them with biting humor, I'm available.
posted by Joey Michaels at 4:55 PM on December 10, 2009 [4 favorites]

Michael Jackson is still dead, right? Just checking.
posted by tkchrist at 5:31 PM on December 10, 2009

Reminiscent of the North Korean school of art propaganda.
posted by gallois at 6:47 PM on December 10, 2009 [1 favorite]

Michael Jackson is still dead, right? Just checking.

Do you mean the disney animatronic MJ, virtual MJ, or the new flesh-based MJ release? Because I paid $99 for an MJ app for my iphone, but he's a whiny little bugger and won't do squat unless you hover your finger over the 'punish' slider-button or flick him in the head a few times. I hope they're going to a re-release where they'll roll out a pre-docile one cause I don't have the time for that crap, although he's gotten pretty good at sorting my emails and I really don't want to have to train a new instantiation.

He's expensive, though. His outfits only cost $.99 but he wants new ones all the goddamn time. I'm probably going to go back to the myLincoln from my nokia if I can run him in a locked-down VM. That bugger can write.
posted by sebastienbailard at 7:11 PM on December 10, 2009

thanks, this was a great post. kinda helps see a bit more into the complex person that michael jackson was.

and for all of you haters: hurf durf isn't an valid argument for anything. but thanks for sharing.
posted by lester's sock puppet at 7:17 PM on December 10, 2009 [1 favorite]

Man, the captions to the images are really needlessly snide and ignorant for some of these (no, that's NOT a hamburger). I mean, this? "C'mon, we've all been there, wearing a top hat and boots . . ." That's clearly a picture of John Darling from Peter Pan. And there's nothing really all that awful about the picture of his son on the throne. Yeah, it's a little silly, but rich folks have been doing that sort of shit for their kids for centuries.
posted by PhoBWanKenobi at 7:33 PM on December 10, 2009

This is nothing compared to the crazy shit I would have if money was truly no object. If anything, I fault him for being kind of trite and predictable. Paintings of an idealized version of yourself? Small potatoes. If I had King of Pop money, I'd start with a shot by shot remake of the movie Manhattan, starring myself in Woody Allen's place. And since actual human cloning is still a ways off, I would have a worldwide search to find every single person on the planet who kind of looks like me. And then hire them to be my posse.
posted by billyfleetwood at 8:17 PM on December 10, 2009 [5 favorites]

So, do you people get prizes for outsnarking each other? Or Snark Points? Do you get a bike or a digital clock or something if you win?
posted by Mael Oui at 10:06 PM on December 10, 2009 [1 favorite]

jesus christ. so many stupid, grade-school level jokes in this thread. take it to reddit, fuckers.

thanks for posting, I wouldn't have found this and I enjoyed looking at the paintings, if for no other reason then they offer an interesting insight into MJ's incredible and eccentric brain.

I don't want to spend much time responding to the idiotic things said in this thread, but one thing that sticks out to me that is especially irksome - the hate on MJ for being rich and commissioning paintings. I'm bitter about the insane wealth concentrated in a small number of people just like the rest of the po people - but there are a few people who I actually think deserve(d) to be rich. CEO's of insurance companies and banks who move numbers around to make money that isn't really there from something they didn't really make is insane. But Michael? He's in the Steve Jobs category for me. He gave us all something really incredible. They are among the few good products of capitalism. Give me my macbook and my MJ records and my life is greatly enhanced. You wanna commission spendy portraits of yourself? Power to you. You lose all our money and then take our tax money to get it back for yourselves and all you create are pages and pages of fine print? Fuck you.
posted by Lutoslawski at 10:07 PM on December 10, 2009 [5 favorites]

but one thing that sticks out to me that is especially irksome - the hate on MJ for being rich and commissioning paintings.

You're getting hate from this? I'm really not getting hate. I'm getting pretty much the usual Mefi level of snark with a side order of astonishment over just how weird this stuff is.

Honestly, I know this isn't a kind place for a person you obviously respected as an artist? But the comments here aren't actually that bad, and the pictures are pretty crazy. Don't let yourself get hung up on it.

Anyway, I would totally commission stuff like this, then hang it up around my house, for visitors to see.
posted by emperor.seamus at 11:43 PM on December 10, 2009

So, do you people get prizes for outsnarking each other? Or Snark Points? Do you get a bike or a digital clock or something if you win?
posted by Mael Oui

Nah, it's pretty much just like this.
posted by Lou Stuells at 6:22 AM on December 11, 2009

You know, I see threads like this and I'm reminded once again that Michael Jackson had more than his share of flaws and peculiarities. No doubt, he was a strange fellow with his own ideas of beauty and taste. He liked his life gaudy and shiny.

Then I put on my headphones and cue up Off The Wall.

I don't like Michael Jackson for his taste in art. The man could've had a house full of sad clown paintings and oil prints of big-eyed kids for all I care.
posted by grabbingsand at 7:34 AM on December 11, 2009 [1 favorite]

Relevant quote from one of my friends while touring Graceland: "Well, he may not have been much on interior design, but damn fool could sure make folks jump and sing."
posted by 1f2frfbf at 8:37 AM on December 11, 2009

Looking at these sort of reminds me of the section in Albert Goldman's biography of Elvis where he talks about Elvis' porn collection, and specifically about a particular fetish of Elvis' that I won't repeat here, because of the point that I'm getting to in a moment. (It's nothing particularly shocking; anyone who has spent any time searching out particular types of porn on the internet--which is very close to the set of anyone who has had private internet access for any length of time--has seen much, much weirder stuff. You can look it up in Goldman's sordid little book if you're that interested.) On the one hand, it's pretty disgusting that Goldman would have thought it necessary to include that particular detail; you know, the decent thing to have done would have been to either return the film to Elvis (if it leaked out while he was alive) or burn it (if it was found after he died). In fact, I know of people who put all their porn on a single, encrypted hard drive, with explicit instructions to their executor to destroy it after their death.

On the other hand, there is the nigh-irresistible impulse to look, to see that secret side of someone, even if you have the sneaking feeling that you'll regret it if you do, thus Goldman's book was a best-seller. And, of course, having looked, you have to deal with the knowledge of that person that you've obtained. I know one guy who has a couple of specific fetishes involving comic book characters that he commissions artwork for, and then publishes the art online. It makes people pretty uncomfortable, and a lot of them make fun of him, but he's unstoppable and defiantly flies his freak flag in the face of the mockers and the squicked-out.

And so you have Michael Jackson and what is basically the most-secret and often most-shameful kind of porn, that image or set of images of your true self that you won't show anyone, unless you're particularly bold or unself-conscious. The thing is, he did show them in public, at least to visitors to Neverland and later in the auction, although it's questionable as to whether he was really in his right mind for the latter, given the fantastic amounts of drugs he was on in his final days. As others have noted above, they would do similar things if they had the money to spare or the opportunity, although the degree to which they'd want to let others know about it--the height of their freak-flagpole, if you will--varies wildly, and probably according to the probable audience. One of my co-workers runs an RPG, and he is well aware of the hours I spend as Lucky, a half-elf woman who became a rogue to escape the clutches of her tyrannical, controlling noblewoman mother (who is based closely on our ex-boss). But there are other characters that I only play online, and even some of those I don't play with my regular online group, given the possibility that I might meet some of them in meatspace. Plus, of course, the aliases that I use for certain forums or for publishing certain things that I write that are utterly unlike the one that I use for MeFi.

And it's not like any of those things are even necessarily that bizarre, at least not to this louche and jaded man. I just have certain places that I don't care to invite other people into, just as at Graceland, the second most visited residence in the U.S. after the White House, you can't go up to the second floor, where Elvis' and Lisa Marie's bedrooms and the bathroom where Elvis died are. And some people might resent that (my ex certainly had a problem with that sort of thing, although I found out later that she certainly had her own forbidden rooms), but others can be uncomfortable that you did invite them in, even if they accepted the invitation.

And so, these images of Michael Jackson, where some people have a problem with their being exhibited at all (and, honestly, we've been bombarded with so many images of him, especially postmortem, that it's understandable that some people might just be sick of him), and others might be disappointed that they're so mundane. They're done by a talented but (at least for these commissions) not particularly imaginative artist, in this sort of clean and fussy style; I draw much more bizarre and baroque pictures of my secret selves, in my head, every day. Don't you?
posted by Halloween Jack at 9:10 AM on December 11, 2009

1f2frfbf : Great minds, &c.
posted by Halloween Jack at 9:11 AM on December 11, 2009

Dude, don't make us google the Elvis thing. Come on.
posted by Artw at 10:00 AM on December 11, 2009

If memory serves, he was into white cotton panties and plating.
posted by box at 10:15 AM on December 11, 2009

That's plating like eating food off of people's bodies, not plating like anything that involves shitting. I swear, Urban Dictionary is the most coprophilic site on the goddamn internet.
posted by box at 10:22 AM on December 11, 2009

*sigh* White cotton panties with a few dark hairs showing around the edges, or so Goldman asserted, having scrutinized the source material closely, possibly with a few beads of sweat on his upper lip, perhaps with one or more of his hands not completely unoccupied--who can say? He is, after all, dead, as was Elvis and John Lennon when he wrote about them, because Dead Men Can't Sue.

Oh, and by the way, Goldman blew goats.
posted by Halloween Jack at 11:15 AM on December 11, 2009