History Main / MadArtist

%% * The Orchestra Verdammten in ''The Apocalypse Suite'' arc of ''ComicBook/TheUmbrellaAcademy''.

* ''Film/{{Effects|1979}}'': Lacey Bickel is a film director whose idea of good cinema involves actually killing people on camera.

* Kayaba Akihiko of ''Literature/SwordArtOnline'' is a Mad Game Designer, trapping twenty-thousand people in a virtual-reality MMO where anyone who dies, dies in real life, and the only way to escape is to defeat the final boss.

* {{Downplayed|Trope}} with Yusuke from ''VideoGame/Persona5'', the AmbiguouslyGay quirky art student party member. While he's far from a bad person, there's no denying he's got some kind of AmbiguousDisorder, possibly on the Autism Spectrum.

This character's motivation and descent into madness may be similar to [[TheyCalledMeMad their scientist counterpart]], caused by a shunning from the community or a dismissal of their work as too crazy or [[TrueArtIsIncomprehensible unorthodox]].

** Deidara and Sasori are an EvilDuo of "artist" villains. Deidara makes frequent references to his "[[MadBomber explosive]]" art, even affirming once that he doesn't do pop-art, he does [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superflat superflat]]. Sasori, by contrast, specializes in creating puppets, [[spoiler:sometimes out of people (including himself).]] He and Deidara often argue about whether art is supposed to be fleeting and transient (like Deidara's exploding sculptures) or eternal (like Sasori's puppets).

* ''Series/CriminalMinds'' has the killer in "True Night", a comic book artist who is basing his art on his murders. He's arguably a subversion though, as he doesn't even realise he's been killing; he's on a psychotic break and has lost a lot of his grasp on reality.
** The killer in "Magnum Opus" makes [[RustProofBlood vivid paintings with blood]]; it's not ''his'' blood. Additionally he [[EyeScream cuts off his victims' eyelids while they're still alive]] so they can better appreciate art.

* ''Series/StargateAtlantis'': In the AlternateRealityEpisode "Vegas", Todd the Wraith (a race of vampiric human-insect hybrids) is captured after his Hiveship was destroyed in a failed invasion of Earth and held in Area 51. He eventually goes delirious from starvation and starts reciting Wraith poetry.

* ''Series/TheXFiles'' featured a mad artist or two, most notably the episode, "Grotesque", in which a sculptor [[spoiler: and later, one of the cops trying to catch him]], became possessed by a desire to kill people and encase their bodies in clay gargoyle sculptures.

* The ''Anime/WeissKreuz'' series is full of these: the musician whose music drives people crazy, the dollmaker who uses human skin in his creations, and a whole cult that revolves around using the body parts of women in artistic arrangements... among others.

* Kayaba Akihiko of ''LightNovel/SwordArtOnline'' is a Mad Game Designer, trapping twenty-thousand people in a virtual-reality MMO where anyone who dies, dies in real life, and the only way to escape is to defeat the final boss.

* Caster and his new buddy Ryuunosuke in ''LightNovel/FateZero''. Sometimes they artistically murder people, but the cake winner for squick has to be the giant cavern filled with people who ''had their organs turned into musical instruments.'' There's an organ that works by squeezing intestine sections for the screams of the victim. Rider notes that a lot of them are [[AndIMustScream still alive...]] [[FateWorseThanDeath technically.]] [[MercyKill He fixes that.]]

* In ''[[https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/220wxh/the_artist/ The Artist]],'' an original {{Website/Reddit}} story from r/nosleep, the narrator falls in love with and marries an artist who creates deranged paintings but otherwise seems like the perfect woman--beautiful, talented, and vivacious. They start a happy life together, but the red flags begin to show when the artist has a mental breakdown, burns all her paintings to a crisp and sculpts the charred remains into a pained-looking phoenix sculpture. Despite this incident, the narrator stays with her and they have twin daughters, while the artist starts to see a psychiatrist and take mood stabilizers. [[HopeSpot Everything seems fine for a few years,]] until [[spoiler:the narrator comes home one day and finds out his wife has [[OffingTheOffspring killed their daughters]]--and their entire daycare class--and made them into an art exhibit, a twisted recreation of her favorite painting, Gustav Klimt's "Death and Life"]].

* "The Jeopardy Room", an episode of ''Series/TheTwilightZone1959'', features the WickedCultured assassin Vassiloff, who uses complicated death traps to kill people because he thinks it gives his victims' deaths more subtlety and sophistication.

[[folder:Mythology and Religion]]
* Some would argue that {{God}} (or the gods) is a mad artist. The creator of the things we see would have to be a great artist, and the world may be insane enough to lead us to suspect that such a creator is a mad artist as well.
[[/folder]]

* Any time Hideshi Hino [[AuthorAvatar "hosts"]] one of his semi-autobiographical manga stories. The eponymous ''Panorama of Hell'' (as well as the rest of his paintings) is painted with the artist's own blood while his inspiration comes from the refuse and bloated animal (and occasionally human) corpses in the nextdoor River of Hell. While Hino's real life childhood probably wasn't as bad as described (for instance, it's doubtful his grandmother actually became a chicken), it obviously wasn't very nice either.

* ''Wiki/SCPFoundation'':

* ''ComicBook/{{Daredevil}}'': The Muse is a SerialKiller who attracts Daredevil's attention when he begins kidnapping [[ComicBook/TheInhumans Inhumans]] and turning them into his latest "masterpieces".

* Opyros from ''{{Literature/Kane}}'' story "The Dark Muse" is a young man obsessed with the idea of writing a perfect poem on Gods of Darkness. To this end, he befriends shady characters (like Kane himself) and experiments with different mind-altering substances (once almost killing his lover Ceteol in the process). Finally he lays his hands on the titular Dark Muse, an artifact that can transfer the user - bodily - to the realm of dreams... and nightmares. This experience wrecks his mind but also finally allows him to write his poem [[spoiler: which turns out to be a BrownNote that kills most listeners during the first official reading and turns the rest stark raving mad.]]

* "Daffy Doodles" has WesternAnimation/DaffyDuck in his CloudCuckoolander phase as a vandal who draws mustaches on signs and billboards.

* In ''Mnaga/TheKindaichiCaseFiles'', Yoichi Takato sees himself as an artist who creates masterpieces by staging a perfect murder mystery. He even offers his services to those who are seeking revenge against others by helping them kill the people who had wronged them.

There is an element of TruthInTelevision with this trope. The list of creative people who have exhibited symptoms of mental illness is inexhaustible.[[note]]Although this is controversial, and evidence exists that the link between creativity and insanity is exaggerated.[[/note]] However, most RealLife Mad Artists aren't violent. They're much more prone to {{Angst}}.

* Doug Rattmann of ''VideoGame/{{Portal}}'' is an intersting case. Unlike most Mad artists, he's benevolent to the player, and most of his artwork is mad paintings that he makes because they help with his schizophrenia.