Michael Jackson

More Snippets II –
Michael Jackson


(Picture: capital.cl)

»An unmistakable clue that the city of X has no claim to declare itself the center of the universe is the existence of books named ›Famous Guests at the City of X‹.
And since the day of today was not a day without a newspaper article attacking the wrongful aspiration of the city of X of wanting to rank among the few metropolises of the world, we feel inspired to speak about a famous guest at the city of X, and in doing so, to update the Berühmte Gäste in Basel book by Gustav A. Wanner, that, originally was published in 1981.

But anything can happen in a city (to avoid the P-word here) of middle size. Be aware that the historic Dr. Faustus once lunched here, at Basel, at the location where is now the Museum of Natural History, and brought some birds with him (to be served for lunch), that were obviously not birds from the region, and some animals were also with him that probably were not animals at all.
And since we recently have spoken of Friedrich Nietzsche walking down Rheinsprung with his one student, we may also note that nine years earlier, in 1867, Fyodor Dostoyevsky (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fyodor_Dostoyevsky), with his wife, had walked up Rheinsprung to get to the Augustinermuseum where, at the time, the art collection was housed.
And famous is the being shaken of the novelist by viewing Holbein’s The Body of the Dead Christ in the Tomb (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Body_of_the_Dead_Christ_in_the_Tomb).

When at the end of the 1990s, Katharina Schmidt, director of the Basel Kunstmuseum, got a phone call, which is, a request, if she was willing to guide a very prominent guest through Basel Kunstmuseum, this might not have been that unusual to her. But it is still like the setting of a Don DeLillo novel, and, again, anything can happen in a middle sized town like Basel, because the announced guest was Michael Jackson, King of Pop. Who was, because the request was granted, coming to the museum with two bodyguards and probably, since the testimony of Katharina Schmidt says nothing of the like, without Bubbles.
But this is to take this account seriously, and to take Michael Jackson even more seriously as a person. Since this is a precious testimony, and everyone interested in art, be it Pop Art or not, might wonder: how is it like to guide THE Pop Icon of the 20th century through an art museum. And one might wonder also: how would it be like to be guided by such an icon, and I imagine this would be a rather memorable experience, not least, because you might get to encounter a real person, which might also result in a shock-like grasping of something that we, yet, know intuitively, but rarely have the chance to verify: there is a difference between the icon, the image – and the man that, here, shows a lively interest in fine art.
At least I feel, if there were no difference at all, this visit at Kunstmuseum Basel, and the 2009 testimony by Katharina Schmidt would have aroused more attention than it actually did. Make the test – and search, by whatever search engine you like, the search terms ›Michael Jackson‹ and ›Lovis Corinth‹ on the world wide web. Because this was the painting, shown above, by which, apparently, the King of Pop was shaken: the Ecce Homo by Lovis Corinth, to be seen at Kunstmuseum Basel (that for 2015, unfortunately, will be closed).

And if you like: buy the newspaper article (actually an interview, in German) with the testimony here: http://www.genios.de/presse-archiv/artikel/ZEIT/20090702/diese-nase-liess-ihn-nicht-kalt/20090702041061.html

Michael Jackson did especially enjoy Picasso’s Arlequin assis…
(picture: schweizer-illustrierte.ch)

…and viewing Giacometti’s Le nez
the King of Pop made a high bounce
and »let go a trill, so charming,
so that the whole hall seemed to sound«
(picture: fondation-giacometti.fr);
yet the director of the Basel Kunstmuseum felt,
which cannot be verified,
that the King of Pop might have misunderstood
this »grimace of death« as a Pinocchio nose…

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