Recommendations of the editorial team
More than 30 years after the publication of the album History: Past, Present and Future, Book I, some of the gigantic Michael Jackson statues that were built to promoted the album are still to be found worldwide.
This is how the works of art were created
At that time, up to ten of these monumental figures were built. One of them was transported over the Thames on a load barge. The British artist Stephen Pyle was commissioned with the project and worked with the sculptor Derek Howarth. First of all, polystyrene models were manufactured, from which cast shapes and fiberglass prints later emerged. The figures were put together and painted in the Elstree Studios near London, so that they looked like statues made of stone.
Jackson is still standing here
Some copies of the Michael Jackson statues are still preserved today. One of the characters is in an abandoned courtyard of a night club in Austria. The owner Franz Josef Zika acquired the statue in 1998 in a benefit auction in favor of the Red Cross. He has been trying to sell them in Vienna for two years. The desired price is 25,000 euros. So far, however, there has been no one because of the high price: n buyer: in.
Other statues of the singer are located in a former amusement park in Johannesburg and in an amusement park in Italy. There the monument was freshly painted in 2019 and equipped with sunglasses.
Several copies broken down
After the “Leaving Neverland” documentary was broadcast in 2019, in which allegations of abuse against Michael Jackson were discussed, several cities removed their statues. Among other things, the figure in the Netherlands and one in Switzerland was dismantled. Another statue that was commissioned in 2009 after Jackson’s death by former Fulham chairman Mohamed Al Fayed was also removed from the National Football Museum in Manchester.
The planned film “Michael”, in which Jackson’s nephew Jaafar Jackson takes on the leading role, was postponed to 2027. The project could be published in two parts.