Painting is like the illustrated biography of Michael Jackson
LOS ANGELES — Michael Jackson always knew how to stir the pot.
Almost 18 months after the artist's death, fans have been speculating about the meaning behind the painting reprinted on the cover of Michael, Jackson's posthumous album out today. Jackson's brother Jackie and the artist, Kadir Nelson, shared the story behind the CD cover in an exclusive interview.
In 2003, while recording the song One More Chance, Jackson spotted a tribute painting of Marvin Gaye's life in Gaye's studio. The King of Pop immediately dialed Nelson. "He said, 'I want one about me, but I want it to be bigger,' " Nelson says. "He was always like that," Jackie adds with a grin. "He wanted things big."
But with Jackson's legal troubles mounting at the time, "it fell through the cracks," Nelson says.
VIDEO: Kadir Nelson, Jackie Jackson talk about album cover
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Two weeks after Jackson's death in June 2009, the 9-by-41/2-foot painting was recommissioned by his estate. In the painting, a portion of which is reproduced on the CD jacket and will appear in promotional posters, trivia-savvy fans will spot a spaceship, harking back to Jackson's 1982 E.T. collaboration, and a floating golden gavel, a nod to his courtroom drama.
Jackson's children, Paris, Prince and "Blanket," appear in the painting multiple times. In one scene, they sit alongside Michael, his hand gripping a supersized water gun. Jackie says water guns were — and remain — a family favorite. "They've always got water guns down (at Hayvenhurst, the Jackson family home in Encino)," Jackie says, chuckling. "You have to be careful — they don't care what you're wearing."
Nelson painted a host of Jackson's famous friends into the piece, but audiences will never see Elizabeth Taylor, Madonna, Oprah Winfrey and Debbie Rowe in reproductions. Nelson and Jackie say those famous folks withheld copyright permission and will be left out of released artwork. The most surprising refusal, Jackie says, was Taylor's. "All the things he's done for Liz Taylor," he murmurs, shaking his head. Who can be spotted in posters? Friends such as Naomi Campbell, Tatum O'Neal and ex-wife Lisa Marie Presley.
There are 50 representations of the pop star in the supersized painting to commemorate the years he lived. "I had to count every day to make sure I was right on," says Nelson, who included a crowned goldfish trapped inside a bubble in his final tally. "Michael was so popular, he lived (like a fish) in a bubble."
For the dominant image of Jackson in the painting, Nelson focused on the idea of royalty, putting Michael in a suit of armor with his hand placed over his heart, "because Michael put his heart into everything that he did," Nelson says.
Jackie gestures to a tiny Volkswagen in the painting that reminds him of the early years. "The bus," he says, remembering how "freezing, going to Chicago in the cold and the snow," they were back then, "taking instruments out of that bus and slipping on the ice."
Today, he says, the family is still healing from Michael's death: "It's something you never get over. "
