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Apollo
Competitions

Book competition

27 July 2018

This week’s book competition prize is Michael Jackson: On the Wall by Nicholas Cullinan with essays by Margo Jefferson and Zadie Smith (National Portrait Gallery; £35). Click here for your chance to win.

Michael Jackson (1958–2009) is certainly one of the most influential cultural figures of the last 50 years. Almost a decade after his death, Jackson’s impact shows no signs of diminishing: his record sales, now well into the hundreds of millions, continue to grow, his videos are still watched and his enormous fan base remains loyal to his memory. Alongside his lingering influence as a recording artist, the questions that surrounded his fame, success, race and gender during his lifetime remain an indelible aspect of his legacy.

Nicholas Cullinan and his co-authors ask why so many contemporary artists have been drawn to Jackson as an image and a subject, and also why he continues to loom so large in our collective cultural imagination. In addition to existing works spanning several different generations of artists and across all media, the book features several new portraits by major artists commissioned especially for this unique project.

Answer the following question, by 12 p.m. on 10 August, to win a copy of Michael Jackson: On the Wall by Nicholas Cullinan with essays by Margo Jefferson and Zadie Smith (National Portrait Gallery; £35).

Q: From which US painter did Michael Jackson commission an equestrian portrait of himself?

For our last competition prize we offered The Militant Muse: Love, War and the Women of Surrealism by Whitney Chadwick (Thames & Hudson; £35). The question was:

Q: Which surrealist artist designed a set for a ballet by George Balanchine and a perfume bottle for Elsa Schiaparelli?

Answer: Leonor Fini

Congratulations to the winner, Maxine Grant