History Main / MadArtist

* In ''Series/{{Castle}}'', a fan of the title character's mystery novels murders people and writes novels about it. He targets Detective Beckett because she is the inspiration for Castle's "Nikki Heat" franchise.

* One episode of ''Series/{{CSI}}'' revolved around a serial murderer who killed people and used rigor mortis to pose them in the poses of his sketches, then placed them around the city.

* Any BigScrewedUpFamily worth its salt should provide examples of almost any trope with "mad" in its title. The Whateleys in ''TabletopGame/{{Deadlands}}'' are no exception. Basil Whateley is a painter, a painter of scenes both mundane and surreal. He can even paint your portrait for you! In fact, if he paints it well enough, [[spoiler:[[PhantomZonePicture the painting will swallow your soul]]! He's even painted a [[{{Death}} rather iconographical-looking]] monster ''into'' existence]].

* ''Literature/TheDarkIsRising'': The unnamed villain of ''Greenwitch'' is a painter who produces brilliant but evil art. It is even described at one point as being 'twisted but good', implying a clear talent even as it disturbs the viewer. Since his paintings can literally be used to cast spells, an 'old method' which Merriman notes he had forgotten existed, that makes this one of the few literal examples of [[TheDarkArts Dark Arts]]. Some of this originality, though, may be undermined by the painter in question living [[UsefulNotes/{{Romani}} in a Gypsy caravan]] which apparently is a mark of his actual racial heritage. (He even attempts to use the grail -- no, not ''[[HolyGrail that]]'' grail, though it is [[{{Expy}} 'made after the fashion of' it]] -- as a scrying device.)

-->'''Shaz:''' A crucial part of my creative process is this new form of visualization acupuncture that I invented, where I set my intention, I hold it in my mind’s eye, and then I spell the words ‘good art’ on my arm with thumbtacks.

* The Wrestling/NationalWrestlingAlliance has had [[LegacyCharacter two]] mad musicians known as Mariachi Loco, known for rambling on about things tangibly related to upcoming matches while strumming their guitars. The second of which would go on to win Wrestling/LuchaUnderground's Trios Title for The Disciples Of Death.[[/folder]]

** In the ''TabletopGame/{{Eberron}}'' setting, while nobody [[BlueAndOrangeMorality really understands why]] [[HumanoidAbomination the Daelkyr]] like to conquer planets and horribly mutate the local inhabitants, WordOfGod leans towards this interpretation -- the Daelkyr aren't conquerors, they're ''artists'', and destroying worlds is simply a form of art to them.

** Malaise is an artistic psychic with illusion powers who's only heroic when he's been [[MoodSwinger taking his medication]]. He finally makes a permanent FaceHeelDoorSlam in the "Who Will Die?" arc [[spoiler:before dying]].
* ''VideoGame/CultistSimulator'': One of the best ways to make money once you have a decent Passion score is to paint. As for the "mad" part...you're an eldritch cultist, that comes baked in. The Ghoul in particular focuses on art, with their ascension requiring them to consume corpses and use the [[EatBrainForMemories recovered memories]] as inspiration in their paintings. It's also someone subverted, in that painting can consume Restlessness and produce Contentment, making art a surprisingly good way of keeping yourself sane. And DoubleSubverted if your painting inspires Fascination, which causes you to go insane from the ''other'' direction.

* In ''VideoGame/DwarfFortress'', dwarves can go into Strange Moods, where they get an idea for an artifact and pursue its creation at the expense of everything else. If they get everything they demand, they'll produce a masterwork item from their highest skill that ignores normal material requirements (e.g. beds usually must be made out of wood, but artifact beds can be metal) and is heavily decorated. If they fail for whatever reason, they go insane. If they succeed, they (usually) become Legendary in the used skill. There are three normal mood types--Fey (are clear with their demands for materials), Secretive (sketches pictures of demands), and Possessed (doesn't gain experience on success), and two that only unhappy dwarves can have, which really fit the trope best- Macabre (will want bones as a material) and Fell (will ''murder another dwarf'' and make the artifact out of their victim's corpse).
* In ''VideoGame/DeadByDaylight'', Ji-Woon Hak, aka the Trickster, records his songs by finding the perfect victims torturing them to death just right, not just for his sick pleasure because he LovesTheSoundOfScreaming, but also so he can twist each sound of their death cries into K-Pop hits.

* ''VideoGame/FateEXTRA'': (Your) Saber is not just a very good swordswoman, she's also a mad artist whose Noble Phantasm, ''Aestus Domus Aurea'', is the manifestation of her derangement and delusion of grandeur. Justified, because she is [[spoiler:[[TheCaligula Nero Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus]].

* ''Manga/DNAngel'': The whole [[SplitPersonality alter-ego]] thing STARTED because of [[spoiler: Satoshi's ancestors becoming ''obsessed'' with a very strange god-complex in which ArtInitiatesLife and they are interrupted mid-life-giving-ceremony of the [=KokuYoku=] (Dark and Krad), in which everything explodes. Including the Niwa ancestor's arms and legs. Owch.]] It is stated that the Hikari ancestors were mentally unstable to begin with, creating dangerous art pieces such as [[spoiler: Argentine who kidnapped Risa because he wanted her heart. Literally.]]
** [[spoiler:No, Argentine didn't literally want Risa's heart. He wanted her to teach him how to have a heart so he could give one to Qualia. He didn't really seem to realize that a 'heart' also was an organ. It was more a concept to him.]]
* Caster and his new buddy Ryuunosuke in ''Literature/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.]]
* Rohan Kishibe, the mangaka from ''Manga/JojosBizarreAdventureDiamondIsUnbreakable'' has shades of this, with [[BunnyEarsLawyer Bunny-Ears Lawyer]] mixed in. When Koichi first meets him, Rohan raves about [[WriteWhatYouKnow how true art should be]] and proceeds to eat a spider so he can experience how it tastes. He then holds Koichi captive in his home to steal his memories using his Stand ability. [[spoiler: They both get better, though.]]

* Mr. 3, high-ranking member of Baroque Works from ''Manga/OnePiece'', had the ability to emit wax from his body and used it to [[WaxMuseumMorgue entrap victims in interesting poses]] in the name of art. Similarly, his partner, Miss Goldenweek, would then paint the resulting statues. She also used her paints to create "color traps" in order to emotionally control and manipulate victims. While the two of them, want to eliminate their targets in the most stylish way they can, them being artists, they (or at least Mr. 3) are cunning enough to have been promoted in their organization above physically superior fighters.

* [[spoiler: Yuri Tokikago's father]] from ''Anime/{{Penguindrum}}''. His creations were seemingly normal (save for [[spoiler: a huge tower in the shape of Michelangelo's ''David'', or something]]), but he was so obsessed with beauty and aesthetics that [[spoiler: he heavily scarred Yuri with his chisels to "make her perfect". He may have [[ParentalIncest molested/raped]] the poor little girl as well.]]

* ''Anime/PsychoPass'' (written by Creator/GenUrobuchi) features a high school girl who [[spoiler:[[BodyHorror dismembers people]] ''[[BodyHorror alive]]'', turns their bodies into plastic, and sculpts them into morbid Creator/HRGiger-esque horror-sexual displays.]]

* ''Manga/RurouniKenshin'' - [[spoiler: Gein]] sees himself as an artist. Everyone else (including the people he was allied with) considers him creepy.

* ''Manga/VampirePrincessMiyu'' fought one of these in the second episode - the shinma Roh-Sha, who sought to eternally capture the beauty of women, by [[FateWorseThanDeath freezing them in time and dressing them up]]. The fact that the women apparently [[AndIMustScream remained completely conscious of their paralyzed plight]], just added to the sheer madness of his 'gallery', as their muted whimpering resounded through the dark halls...
* Minor example was the one-shot villain and manga artist Chitaro Ariga from ''Anime/YuGiOhZEXAL''. (Not truly mad, and he was actually a decent artist. He was just a BrainwashedAndCrazy pawn of the real villain.)

* Gilded Lily, in ''ComicBook/AlphaFlight'', married men and turned them into gold statues.
* In Creator/GrantMorrison's ''ComicBook/AnimalMan'' run, one story had an alien artist from Hawkman's world, who created an orb that displayed psychic images from his life. The psychic output is strong enough to threaten the world.
* ''ComicBook/{{Batman}}''

** And don't forget Professor Pyg from [[ComicBook/BatmanGrantMorrison Morrison's run]], who uses surgery and chemicals to turn his victims into mind-controlled slaves with [[BodyHorror doll masks glued to their faces]].

* Creator/GrantMorrison's run on ''ComicBook/DoomPatrol'' includes several mad artists. The Hangman's Beautiful Daughter, one of Crazy Jane's 64 personalities, creates living paintings. The Brotherhood of Dada isn't so much a team of villains as a troupe of anarchistic performance artists, which leads to their quest for The Painting That Ate Paris.
* In Franchise/{{the DCU}}, Thanagarian artists often complete their "life's work" by killing themselves and a lot of innocent people with them.

* ''ComicBook/SpiderMan'': ComicBook/{{Mysterio}} is not insane, but he has a real flair for the dramatic, and his crimes are as much about showing off his skills as an artist and performer as they are to get money or revenge. ''The Amazing Mary Jane'' even features him trying to go semi-straight as a legitimate film director...although he had to kidnap and impersonate a PrimaDonnaDirector to get funding.

* Then there's King Mob's gang in ''ComicBook/TheInvisibles'' (also by Creator/GrantMorrison).
** Ironically the character who flirted most closely with true insanity was Ragged Robin, whose contributions to KM's cell rarely involved a body count, and whose influence helped convince King Mob to dial down his (always ambivalent) urge toward gunplay and mayhem.
* The Swedish comic ''James Hund'' featured an ''art critic serial killer''; he kills people he thinks produces worthless "pseudo-art" by means reflecting their work -- so for instance, a man that makes wooden sculptures then saws them apart is, well... They set a trap for him by portraying a man as a "neo-brutalist" who creates paintings by shooting intestines with a shotgun at canvas. Alone. At night. On top of a deserted building...
* The titular character from ''ComicBook/JohnnyTheHomicidalManiac'' is implied to have once been a rather talented artist who lost his creativity, and subsequently went completely insane.
** Nail Bunny actually implies that Johnny was messed up before losing his ability, and still did horrible things to people, but for different reasons. [[spoiler: The fact that the [[EldritchAbomination thing-behind-the-wall]] is sapping his creativity might be worsening his condition, but only because he was seriously messed up to begin with. The process usually just drives people to suicide, as Senor Diablo points out, not murder.]]
** There's also Creator/JhonenVasquez, the creator of Johnny. While not nearly as psychotic as his creation, he does have hypnophobia, and throws around terms such as "Moose", "Meat", and "Chihuahua" in his creations. Of course, there's also the matter of [[ComicBook/JohnnyTheHomicidalManiac what he has]] [[WesternAnimation/InvaderZim created]].
* Creator/AlanMoore's ''ComicBook/{{Providence}}'' tackles this when Robert Black notes in his commonplace book that he doubts he has the literary talent to write the UsefulNotes/GreatAmericanNovel about the "hidden America". He states that he's probably too normal to be a great writer and that to properly deal with the occult one has to be a little crazy to start with.
** Ronald Underwood Pitman plays with this trope. He paints murderous ghouls and the Stella Sapiente, and [[spoiler:kills people for his art]]. But he acts perfectly sane.
* Creator/SteveDitko did a ''ComicBook/TheQuestion'' story about a charlatan modern artist who hated uplifting and high-quality historic artworks, who dressed up as one of his own ugly, sludgy-looking sculptures to become an art-vandalizing supervillain.

* The Orchestra Verdammten in ''The Apocalypse Suite'' arc of ''ComicBook/TheUmbrellaAcademy'' are a death cult composed of virtuoso classical violinists.

* Lisa Molinari, a.k.a. Coat of Arms, creates her own version of the ''ComicBook/YoungAvengers'' (who later change their name to the [[Characters/MarvelComicsYoungMasters Young Masters]]) as an art project examining the nature of superheroism. Lisa is a TrueNeutral person whose only interest in superheroism is artistic. Besides herself, this team included two genuinely good people, a [[ComicBook/ThePunisher Punisher]] wannabe, a size-changing neo-Nazi, and a robot that said neo-Nazi reprograms to have views similar to her own. She is also a fan of [[Characters/MarvelComicsNormanOsborn Norman Osborn]].
** She later appears in ''ComicBook/AvengersAcademy'' helping Jeremy Briggs remove and redistribute all superpowers in the world because she thinks it will be a piece of "performance art" even greater than the ComicBook/{{Civil War|2006}}.

* In ''Fanfic/ShadowchasersPowerPrimordial'' gorgons are mostly aversions; one of them relates why the atypical depiction of them fitting this trope by displaying victims is self-destructive. (It's kind of a dead giveaway for any potential victims.) Despite this, one respected gorgon (Althea, curator of the Musee Arcane in Rome) is rumored to punish guests who try to rob and vandalize the museum this way - with the heroes' approval. (This rumor is, in fact true, the Shadowchasers have a deal that gives them unlimited access to the museum in exchange for letting her deal with such guests ''her'' way, although she restores them and lets them go after someone pays for the damage they did; blackmail, perhaps, but after the magical security she formerly used to protect the place caused too many accidents due to thieves that were too stupid to heed the warning signs and get the hint, Jalal decided this was easier.)

* In ''Film/HouseOf1000Corpses'', Otis B. Driftwood uses his abductees' bodies to make tableau-sculptures. And rants impressively at them about being an Artist in Torment.

* ''Film/ASerbianFilm'': Vukmir genuinely believes in the power of his cinema and is invested in his vision. His [[TorturePorn sick and twisted vision]]...

* The villain in ''Literature/{{Dexter}} by Design''. To a degree, [[spoiler:Lila]] in the TV show.

* In ''Literature/TheEggMan'', [[spoiler: the protagonist gradually turns into this. He ends up killing his unfaithful lover and then painting a picture of her corpse while standing on a rooftop with corporate soldiers trying to break down the door and kill him.]]

* Opyros from the ''Literature/KaneSeries'' 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.]]

* In ''Literature/ThePhantomOfTheOpera'', the Phantom, between [[ProfessionalKiller his]] [[{{Blackmail}} many]] [[StickyFingers talents]] also is a great [[{{Bizarrchitecture}} architect]], the world’s best {{ventriloqui|sm}}t and TortureTechnician.
-->"Did you design [[TortureCellar that room?]] [[RoboticTortureDevice It's very handsome]]. You're a great artist, Erik."\\
"Yes, [[IronicEcho a great artist]], [[TortureTechnician in my own line]]."

** Despite his son Maglor following in his father's footsteps both as an artist and a murderer, he actually becomes a subversion of all that his father represented. Instead of smithing, his renown came as the greatest minstrel of his time which as peace was never much of an option led to him becoming a WarriorPoet. As for the atrocities that he was involved and contributed in, he was easily the most reasonable and kind of Fëanor's sons - he was mostly convinced to commit them by his brothers and by the oath that his father forced them to take, and deeply regrets all he's done wandering along the seashore singing laments.

* On Season 1 of ''Series/{{Dexter}}'', the BigBad Ice Truck Killer would display the neat, bloodless body parts of his victims in an artistic manner that wins Dexter's admiration. Vince would later compare the Ice Truck Killer to an artist.
** In Season 2, Lila is an eccentric artist who works with items that she steals. [[spoiler:She's also a pyromaniac and a StalkerWithACrush for Dexter.]]

** Mehendri Solon in [[Recap/DoctorWhoS13E5TheBrainOfMorbius "The Brain of Morbius"]] is this in addition to being a MadScientist ''and'' a MadDoctor. He wants to revive a Time Lord dictator by building him a new body, but is far too concerned with both the body and the methods being used to build it being beautiful. He has decorated his house with home-made sculptures of heads which the Doctor comments he finds a bit disturbing, and it's implied that despite his stated reasoning, the real reason he becomes dead-set upon using the Doctor's head in his project is simply because he likes the look of it.
** The main villain of [[Recap/DoctorWhoS24E2ParadiseTowers "Paradise Towers"]] was Kroagnon, an insane, intellectually-snobbish architect who filled his buildings with booby-traps to kill anyone who tried to actually use them and "spoil" their aesthetic beauty.
** [[Recap/DoctorWhoS27E12BadWolf "Bad Wolf"]], already a parody of reality TV, had a futuristic version of ''What Not to Wear'' hosted by two robots with, er... unconventional fashion ideas.

** The Doctor meets Vincent van Gogh in [[Recap/DoctorWhoS31E10VincentAndTheDoctor "Vincent and the Doctor"]]. While Vincent's mentally ill, he isn't dangerous.

* The second season opener of the anthology series ''Series/TheHunger1997'' ("Sanctuary") has Julian Priest (Music/DavidBowie), whose fascination with/resentment of death manifested itself in increasingly grisly and shocking performance art -- one piece had him surgically strip away a large piece of skin from his lower arm -- that led to outrage and shunning. Encountering a young man on the run for the murder of Julian's agent, he decides he'd make the perfect subject for his next work... the madness runs ''so'' deep that [[spoiler: the stranger is all in his head. Julian was the murderer and he's actually killing himself -- since turning his demise into a work of art will bring him the immortality he craves. The ghost of]] Julian goes on to host the rest of the series. (This is not Bowie's first encounter with this trope -- see Music below.)

* One ''Series/LawAndOrderCriminalIntent'' episode had an artist who killed women and sketched them as a way to deal with his feelings about the women who'd abused him his whole life. Goren eventually catches him by [[spoiler: pointing out that the other artist whom he got to photograph the corpses had touched them up to make the women look angelic, ruining the "integrity" of the work. This causes the killer to flip out and incriminate himself]].

** Not a colleague, but the adopted child of said colleague. However, she could only have adopted that child because she killed her biological mother several years before - [[MindScrew apparently]].

* "Ich Will" by Music/{{Rammstein}} features the band as Art Terrorists, [[spoiler: blowing up a bank and one of the band members]]. It's a commentary on media obsession with a good story and the ImmortalityImmorality of those who are (or who seek) to be [[FameThroughInfamy remembered due to their crimes.]]

* In ''Podcast/OnTheThreshold'' Zoey Evans combines this with MadScientist. She says that "the human mind is the ultimate canvas on which I paint my art", which means she's intent on creating novel mental experiences through her VR artwork, [[CreepyCathedral one environment of which]] includes an altar with the corpse of Jesus Christ as a preamble and is intended to cause the "inversion of religious ecstasy", which she says leaves those who experience broken and shunned if they ever express it. The fact that many who have tried the VR environment have seizures doesn't concern her in the slightest, and indeed just seems like proof that she is close to her goal.

* Any BigScrewedUpFamily worth its salt should provide examples of almost any trope with "mad" in its title. The Whateleys in ''TabletopGame/{{Deadlands}}'' are no exception. Basil Whateley is a painter, a painter of scenes both mundane and surreal. He can even paint your portrait for you! In fact, if he paints it well enough, [[spoiler: [[PhantomZonePicture the painting will swallow]] [[SealedGoodInACan your soul]]! He's even painted a [[{{Death}} rather iconographical-looking]] monster ''into'' existence!]]
* In ''TabletopGame/DungeonsAndDragons'' some races, especially non-humanoid, have whole disturbing forms of art. E.g. one supplement described beholders' art -- unsurprisingly, visual and EyeBeams-based: [[DisintegratorRay disintegration]]-carved stone sculptures and installations of [[TakenForGranite petrified]] victims in various [[OhCrap expressive]] poses. And sometimes one is combined with the other.

--> [[spoiler:Estriss]]: This determination to push the horizons of art for art's sake ultimately explains the rare occurrence of reigar. Simply put, they went a bit too far.
--> '''Teldin''': A bit too --
--> [[spoiler:Estriss]]: [[EarthShatteringKaboom They blew up their homeworld.]] And that is another issue. If the reigar were to gain control of the ''[[LivingShip Spelljammer]]'', they would regard the ship as little more than a base for artistic experiments. Given the reigar's penchant for excess, it is an appalling prospect.
** In the ''TabletopGame/{{Eberron}}'' setting, while nobody [[BlueAndOrangeMorality really understands why]] [[HumanoidAbomination the Daelkyr]] like to conquer planets and horribly mutate the local inhabitants, WordOfGod leans towards this interpretation - the Daelkyr aren't conquerors but ''artists'', and destroying worlds is simply a form of art to them.

* In ''TabletopGame/VampireTheMasquerade'', the [[LooksLikeOrlok Nosferatu]] clanbooks mention some of them making an art out of killing, intentionally employing tropes from slasher movies when stalking their victims. Such Nosferatu are nicknamed [[Film/TheTexasChainsawMassacre1974 "Leatherfaces"]].

** The first game has a mad gnome who has somehow gotten control of basilisks and uses them to make [[TakenForGranite statues]]. Fortunately for everyone involved, he is hanging out a fair bit from any roads or inhabited places, and he doesn't seem very proactive in acquiring new statues unless they come to him.

** Sander Cohen, the radio and stage personality and spliced-out freak who lurks in Fort Frolic. He apparently went from writing propaganda for Andrew Ryan to gems like forcing a man to play a piano rigged with explosives, turning people into plaster sculptures, and forcing the player to kill four of his disciples-turned-rivals and take photos of their corpses. His madness may not stem from his art, but they definitely run together at the time of the game. The best part? According to both ''Literature/BioShockRapture'' and ''VideoGame/BioShockInfinite'''s ''BioShockInfinite/BurialAtSea'' DLC, he was just as loony BEFORE he was spliced up.
-->'''Atlas:''' Cohen's an artist, says some. He's a Section Eight, says I. I've seen all kinds of cutthroats, freaks, and hard cases in my life, but Cohen, he's a real lunatic, a dyed-in-the-wool psychopath...

--->'''Steinman:''' I try to make them beautiful, but they always turn out ''wrong!'' This one - too fat! That one - too tall! This one - too ''symmetrical!''
* ''VideoGame/BravelyDefaultII'' has Folie [[spoiler:[[ArtAttacker holder of the pictomancer asterisk]]]] who in her quest to get high quality paint for her magnum opus has among other things: [[spoiler: participated in the invasion of Musa in order to get her hands on the earth crystal, used the earth crystal's power to force the growth of several massive trees within the city of Wiswald, destroying public infrastructure and leaving many people homeless just to extract yellow paint from the bark of these trees. [[WouldHurtAChild Killed Mona]] and used the despair caused by her death in order to brainwash Mona's parents and loved ones so that she could use Mona's dad Roddy's resources in order to have him create high quality blue paint and lastly [[SerialKiller secretly kidnapped and killed a lot of people]] in order to harvest red paint from their blood. Oh and the painting she created using all this unethically sourced paint also happens to be a [[EldritchAbomination vaguely organic looking cave mural that fights alongside Folie during her boss fight.]]]]

-->'''[[LargeHam "I'LL MAKE YOU MY MASTERPIECE!"]]'''
* The first [[SerialKiller Parasite]] from ''VideoGame/TheCatLady'' is [[spoiler: a doctor that uses his victim's skin and body parts to recreate famous works of art.]]
* The Maestro from ''VideoGame/CityOfHeroes'' - a famed singer who lost his voice, went crazy, and was offered a new voice by The Council. His new voice will [[WordsCanBreakMyBones Break Your Bones]]. By the time you meet him, he's a boss-class supervillain who uses sonic attacks and complains about you interrupting his 'symphony'.
** Also, Malaise - he's an artistic psychic with illusion powers who's only heroic when he's been [[MoodSwinger taking his medication]]. He finally makes a permanent FaceHeelDoorSlam in the "Who Will Die?" arc, [[spoiler: before dying]].

* Many players of ''VideoGame/DwarfFortress'' take on this sort of role during megaprojects or killing sprees.
** In-game, dwarves can go into Strange Moods, where they get an idea for an artifact and pursue its creation at the expense of everything else. If they get everything they demand, they'll produce a masterwork item from their highest skill that ignores normal material requirements (e.g. beds usually must be made out of wood, but artifact beds can be metal) and is heavily decorated. If they fail for whatever reason, they go insane. If they succeed, they (usually) become Legendary in the used skill. There are three normal mood types--Fey (are clear with their demands for materials), Secretive (sketches pictures of demands), and Possessed (doesn't gain experience on success), and two that only unhappy dwarves can have, which really fit the trope best- Macabre (will want bones as a material) and Fell (will ''murder another dwarf'' and make the artifact out of their victim's corpse).
*** From the popular LP of this game, ''Blog/{{Boatmurdered}}'', Sankis becomes one of these after retiring as overseer of the fortress, making engravings about various things that had been happening around the fortress, including elephants killing dwarves, burning goblins, cheese, and ''homages to '''other images of cheese.'''''

* In ''Franchise/TheElderScrolls'' series, Sheogorath is the [[OurGodsAreDifferent Daedric Prince]] of [[MadGod Madness]]. His sphere also covers creativity and the arts, with it being said that he invented music on Mundus (the mortal plane). Naturally, those who fit this trope are indirect followers of Sheogorath. Of course, being an unpredictable Mad God, he's as likely to ''[[http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Lore:16_Accords_of_Madness,_v._IX torment them]]'' as he is to inspire them, but still.

* Pickman in ''VideoGame/Fallout4''. When you first encounter him, some Raiders are attacking him for [[spoiler: slaughtering their buddies and using their body parts to paint some rather disturbing portraits. And should you save Pickman, he tells you that he's in fact a SerialKillerKiller, who hunts down the Raiders and bring terror upon them. Whether or not he lives is up to the player.]]
* ''VideoGame/FateEXTRA'': (Your) Saber is not just a very good swordswoman, she's also a mad artist whose Noble Phantasm, ''Aestus Domus Aurea'', is the manifestation of her derangement and delusion of grandeur. Justified, because she is [[spoiler:[[TheCaligula Nero Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus]]. See also RealLife section, below]].
* Mr. Mechanical from ''VideoGame/FreedomForce''. Though at first glance he may look like your average MadScientist villain, he is actually a disgraced ''architect'' (real name Clyde [=DeWitt=]) who was laughed out of the profession after one of his avant-garde buildings collapsed a week after it was unveiled. Insisting the building was sabotaged by petty and inferior minds, jealous and incapable of appreciating his works, he unleashes an army of [[HumongousMecha giant robots]] (apparently designed by him with the help of BigBad Timemaster) to destroy the city and its "hideous designs". And when the heroes defeat those, he jumps in an even BIGGER robot and goes on a rampage trying to destroy schools and hospitals while blathering on how [[PlatoIsAMoron he's superior to Gropius and Frank Lloyd Wright]]. He's quite entertaining.
-->'''Mr. Mechanical''': All architects before me only knew how to build...create...only I'm bold enough to ''destroy!''

* In ''VideoGame/LifeIsStrange'', [[spoiler: Mark Jefferson]] is a photographer that drugs and kidnaps teenage girls and then take shots while the victims are looking desperate. The reason for this? An obsession with the BreakTheCutie trope, according to [[spoiler:his]] own words.

* Downplayed in Rin's route during ''VisualNovel/KatawaShoujo''. [[spoiler: While going through a bad case of artist's block, Rin tries new methods to help her gain inspiration. Methods such as smoking, not sleeping at all, not eating enough and generally destroying herself for the sake of becoming a real artist. It culminates with [[PlayerCharacter Hisao]] catching her masturbating, leading to her requesting he help her finish. In the scene afterwards, he gives her a minor WhatTheHellHero over the whole thing.]]

[[folder:Web Animation]]
* In the short ''Patchwork'' by [=IsArt Digital=], a sculptor finds he can no longer create beauty from stone, so he starts murdering various women for their best parts to create a flesh statue. In the end, all that's missing is a pretty head. His would-be victim, however, is a serial killer herself who likes to cut off men's heads, leave them in a creatively picked spot, and take a photo to make it last. So, she kills the sculptor and finishes the flesh statue with his head.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Web Original]]

* Either the Sketchbook or the Puppets during the Creativity Explosion from ''WebVideo/DontHugMeImScared'', depending on whether you see it as the Sketchbook's doing.

* ''Podcast/LessIsMorgue'' has Shaz, a hallucinogen-addicted [[OurGhoulsAreCreepier ghoul]] with an extremely strange approach to their modern art.
-->'''Shaz:''' A crucial part of my creative process is this new form of visualization acupuncture that I invented, where I set my intention, I hold it in my mind’s eye, and then I spell the words ‘good art’ on my arm with thumbtacks.

* ''WebVideo/ThePainter'' is about a serial killer who paints grotesque caricatures of their victims prior to murdering them in uniquely bizarre ways, and the paintings and their titles all reference how they died.

* In ''Literature/TalesFromCherryshrubMississippi'', one of the monikers of the multi-armed HumanoidAbomination D'regorra is "Mad Artist." True to form, she stitches every orifice of her victim's body and steals their souls to make them her eternal slaves. If they refuse, she would add them to the tapestry lining the walls of her catacomb she terms her "Wall of Pain" comprised of thousands of victims [[AndIMustScream aware of their fates but are incapable of doing anything about it]].

* Dino Velvet of ''Film/EightMM'' believes his films are very artistic, even though in reality they're just BDSM porn and, in one case, a [[SnuffFilm snuff film]].

* Jimmy in ''ComicBook/ArtSchoolConfidential''. [[spoiler: He paints pictures of his murder victims and incorporates mementoes he took from the actual body.]]
* In ''Film/Batman1989'', the Joker describes himself as "the world's first, fully functioning homicidal artist" and shows a perverse delight in Vicki Vale's graphic war photos, telling her that she gives it all such a glow. She is definitely not appreciative of the "living work of art" that he shows off to her (Alicia, Jack Napier's girlfriend, who has been physically and emotionally scarred such that she has to wear a mask as a result of what the Joker did to her). His minions join in, splattering paint on works of art in a museum gallery and otherwise being creatively destructive. TheDragon even takes this a step further, slashing open canvases with a sword -- until the Joker stops him, admitting that he "kind of likes" one of the paintings (Francis Bacon's infamously macabre ''Figure with Meat''). The premise is [[RefugeInAudacity so absurd]] that it's hard to tell if the Joker truly believes that he and his men are "improving" the artistic pieces or if he [[EvilIsPetty just wants to destroy everything in sight out of bitterness at his own disfigurement]].
* ''Film/TheBlackCat'': Hjalmar Poelzig is a Bauhaus-style architect, who is also a war criminal, [[HollywoodSatanism Hollywood Satanist]], serial killer, and strongly implied necrophile.

* The main character in Roger Corman's ''Film/ABucketOfBlood'' gains recognition in the Beatnik art community with a dead cat covered in clay. He works his way up from there...
* Antonio, the brilliant flamenco dancer and choreographer in Carlos Saura's ''Film/{{Carmen}}'', becomes obsessed with the young woman dancing the lead in his new production, ''Carmen.'' Her name? Carmen. Let's just say that LifeImitatesArt.

* In the film ''Film/ADoubleLife'', the lead character (a noted stage actor) gets so far into the characters he plays that his whole day-to-day personality is overwritten. This is bad news when he plays Othello.
* ''Film/{{Effects|1979}}'': Lacey Bickel is a film director whose idea of good cinema involves actually killing people on camera. [[spoiler:Good thing he's actually a fictional portrayal in universe.]]

-->"I can look at a guy like Mick Jagger, and see a pillbug that can fart the Blue Danube!"

* ''Film/TheHouseThatJackBuilt'': Jack’s view of art is... postmodern, to say the least. In his discussions with Verge, Jack outlines his philosophies about the value of decay in classical art as well as artisanal fields such as wine-making to justify his monstrous actions. Most tellingly, Jack lectures Verge on the iconic value of the German Stuka divebomber planes from WWII and expresses great admiration for the Nazis' atrocities (plus Communists') since in his view destruction is the greatest art, with it being a kind of creation itself. So they were the greatest artists who ever lived. This is the last straw that enrages Verge enough to cement Jack as the worst person he had ever [[spoiler:ferried]].
* In ''Film/HouseOf1000Corpses,'' Otis B. Driftwood uses his abductees' bodies to make tableau-sculptures. And rants impressively at them about being an Artist in Torment.
* One of the most iconic examples was Professor Henry Jarrod, portrayed wonderfully by Creator/VincentPrice in the 3-D horror film ''Film/HouseOfWax1953''. A disfigured sculptor, he repopulates his destroyed wax museum by murdering people and using their wax-coated corpses as displays, also using wax to conceal his own scarred face.

---> '''Chef Julian:''' Let you live? No! Of course not. Can't you see that that'd ruin the menu?
* The villains in the low budget horror movie ''Murder Party'' are all willing to kill the film's hapless protagonist for an art project. With the exception of [[BigBad Alexander]] [[spoiler: whom even calling an artist would be too charitable]] they're all untalented and incompetent artists which perhaps explains why they are so willing to commit murder.
* In ''Film/MysteryOfTheWaxMuseum'', Ivan Igor is a wax sculptor who is determined to restore his previous creations, no matter the cost.
* Lukey, the eccentric and violent artist from the concluding parts of ''Film/OddManOut'' (1943), is an alcoholic version of this trope, creating religious-styled paintings of tortured souls with bulging eyes and setting them on fire when he's unhappy with them. Ultimately he tries to paint the film's protagonist, who is dying from gunshot wounds, as he sits bleeding to death, to get a glimpse into the "human soul". And fails.
* Jean-Baptiste Grenouille in ''Literature/{{Perfume}}'' has a superhuman sense of smell, but no scent of his own. Believing that "the soul of beings is their scent," he decides to create the perfect perfume by capturing and combining the scents of beautiful young women. It turns out that he must kill the women in order to capture their scent, turning his artistic quest into a murder spree.
* ''Film/ASerbianFilm'': Vukmir genuinely believes in the power of his cinema and is invested in his vision. His [[RapeByProxy sick]] [[InterplayOfSexAndViolence and]] [[TorturePorn twisted]] [[SnuffFilm vision]]...

-->"My art... keeps me sane. Art. Sane."
* In ''Film/SecretWindow'', [[spoiler: the main character turns out to be a mad artist (of the 'mystery writer who acts out his own story' type) with SplitPersonality]].
* Evelyn from ''Theatre/TheShapeOfThings'':
-->[[spoiler:"As for me, I have no regrets, no feelings of remorse for my actions, the manufactured emotions-- none of it. I have always stood by the single and simple conceit...that I am an artist, only that. There is... only art."]]
* ''Film/ShadowOfTheVampire'' turns F. W. Murnau, the real-life director of ''Film/{{Nosferatu}}'' into this trope, since he hires an ''actual vampire'' to make [[EnforcedMethodActing his movie realistic as possible]]. Naturally, he doesn't seem to realize the danger he brought to the cast and crew for his artistic vision and and [[FromBadToWorse things quickly go FUBAR]]. [[spoiler:By the end of the movie, he has completely lost his mind as Max Schreck kills his co-workers and he finishes the movie while Schreck is killed by sunlight]].
* Irving Wallace, the killer in the SlasherMovie ''Film/StageFrightAquarius'' is hinted to be one. After disposing of everyone in the theater (except the FinalGirl, whom he somehow forgot), he starts organizing the bodies into a bizarre display. After he is done, he sits down in the middle of it and starts stroking the local caretaker's cat.
** [[Franchise/{{Halloween}} Michael Myers]] also seems to occasionally "admire" how he kills, and displays, his victims.
* The film ''Film/StrangerThanFiction'' plays with this, and splits it into two parts. Karen Eiffel, the author, isn't ''aware'' that the protagonist of her tragedy is going to die in real life, but she certainly acts a bit Mad, loitering in the emergency room of a hospital and complaining that nobody's dying; another character who's a fan of hers fits the "sees life as incidental next to Art" bit, advising the hero not to try to avert his doom because it makes ''such a good story''. [[spoiler:He actually manages to persuade him, but the author changes her mind and lets him live.]]

-->"I feel like I'm taking ''crazy pills''!"

* ''Literature/TwentySixSixtySix'': There’s an artist who chopped off his own hand to provide the centerpiece for his last work. The critics visit him at the asylum.
* Possibly the original namer for this trope, Horace gives this description of the "Mad Poet" in the ''Ars Poetica'', making this trope OlderThanFeudalism.

* [[GodIsEvil The Lamb]], from Mervyn Peake's short story ''Boy In Darkness'', who uses PsychicPowers to change people, [[TransformationTrauma physically]] [[MindRape and mentally]] into [[HalfHumanHybrid half-person]], [[{{Squick}} half-animal]]...''creatures'' for the sake of [[ForScience art]].
* David Wingrove's ''Literature/ChungKuo'' series of novels has Ben Sheppard, a schizophrenic genius who straddles the line between ForScience and For Art. He throws himself into improving his new virtual reality artistic medium [[WhileRomeBurns while civilization is tearing itself apart]], sees a bandit raid as a chance to improve his artistic skills by observing their slaughter, and openly scoffs at the idealistic goals of his more outward-looking counterpart Kim Ward.
* Creator/HPLovecraft's Franchise/CthulhuMythos:

* The villain in ''Literature/DexterByDesign''. To a degree, [[spoiler:Lila]] in the TV show.

-->Moist stopped himself from turning, because that way madness lay. Mind you, a lot of it was also standing in front of him.

* ''Literature/FactionParadox''[='s=] Godfather Auteur, is [[BilingualBonus as the name suggests]] a mad ''writer'' convinced that he has the ability to [[RealityWarper write reality into existence]]. And indeed, it is often suggested that he [[ParanoiaFuel may be correct]] to some extent, although he is certainly not omnipotent as he thinks he is. At any rate, he has written such things as {{Dracula}} becoming the all-powerful leader of a future Earth, simply because he believes it would make for a more interesting story; and even among his charges and followers, he has deliberately [[StarCrossedLovers separated lovers]] because [[ForTheEvulz it amused him]].
* In Creator/SusanCooper's young-adult fantasy novel ''Literature/{{Greenwitch}}'', the unnamed villain is a painter who produces brilliant but evil art. It is even described at one point as being 'twisted but good', implying a clear talent even as it disturbs the viewer.
** Since his paintings can literally be used to cast spells, an 'old method' which Merriman notes he had forgotten existed, that makes this one of the few literal examples of [[TheDarkArts Dark Arts]]. Some of this originality, though, may be undermined by the painter in question living [[UsefulNotes/{{Romani}} in a Gypsy caravan]] which apparently is a mark of his actual racial heritage. (He even attempts to use the grail--no, not ''[[HolyGrail that]]'' [[HolyGrail grail]], though it is [[{{Expy}} 'made after the fashion of' it]] -- as a scrying device.)
* In Creator/AgathaChristie's novel ''Literature/HalloweenParty'', Michael Garfield will do anything for the sake of creating a beautiful garden on a Greek island. [[spoiler:That includes killing numerous people, including his own daughter.]]
** In her novel ''Literature/AndThenThereWereNone'', the mastermind behind ten unsolvable artistic deaths on Soldier Island considers himself this, not for having planned and carried out his plan but for writing a confession detailing how he did it. He acknowledges that while he made a crime noone can solve, he wants someone to know he did it so that people can bear witness to his genius, twisted as it may be.
* Creator/ChuckPalahniuk seems to like this trope. Nearly all the writers in ''Literature/{{Haunted 2005}}'' qualify by the end of the book, if not at the start. ''Diary'' protagonist/narrator Misty, a painter, has symptoms of instability that even predate the strain of being the wife of a coma patient trying to care for her mother-in-law and teen daughter with the family money running out.
* Benjamin, the serial killer antagonist from ''Literature/HollowPlaces,'' has shades of it. His modus operandi is to turn women into mummies because he sees them as beautiful and ‘natural’, though it’s for an audience of one.

* Carol O'Connell's crime novel ''Killing Critics'' is full of them, and the one who turns out to be the killer isn't the maddest.
* From Creator/DeanKoontz' works:
** In ''Relentless,'' we have Shearman Waxx, a book critic obsessed with destroying any writer who dares veer away from the postmodern, deconstructionist philosophy... to the point that, should they keep writing after he trashes them in a review, he will [[spoiler: hunt them down, destroy everything they own, murder their loved ones while forcing them to watch, then finally torture them to death.]] As it turns out, he is [[spoiler: just one of an entire rogue black-ops bureaucracy dedicated to the cause, as a way to control and steer the popular culture to a more "ideal"... Nietzchean... end.]] Subverted in the fact that, as a writer, Waxx himself is an abysmal hack, using boilerplate quotes and recycled turns of phrase in all his reviews.
** ''Velocity'' deals with a crazed performance artist named Valis, who sends written ultimatums to the protagonist rhetorically asking which people he should kill. The protagonist correctly surmises that Valis sees his crimes as works of art and eventually tracks him down, leading to a deranged monologue from Valis.

* One of Creator/DorothyLSayers' ''Literature/LordPeterWimsey'' stories, "The Man With the Copper Fingers," featured a sculptor who disposed of [[spoiler: his murdered girlfriend by dipping her into his bronze-plating solution, thus turning her into a statue.]]
* The TropeMaker is Creator/ETAHoffmann's short story "Mademoiselle de Scudéry" about [[spoiler:a jeweler who is psychologically driven to kill people who buy his work, even though he doesn't always want to]] -- ItWasHisSled.

* The MacGuffin in Creator/RobertAsprin's novel ''[[Literature/MythAdventures Myth Directions]]'' is a hideous metal toad sculpture, the last piece done by a sculptor named Watgit "before" he went mad.
* Various Creator/KimNewman works feature Constant Drache, a modern architect who is a follower of [[TheAntichrist Derek Leech]]. He does things like designing buildings intended to drive people homicidally insane, make them unhappy and use their negative emotions to create magical power, or gas all their occupants on the orders of a malevolent boss with an Egypt fixation and a desire to take his employees to the afterlife with him.

* ''Franchise/ThePhantomOfTheOpera'' is a mad musician, composing music and teaching Christine how to sing.
** In [[Literature/ThePhantomOfTheOpera the original book]] from Gaston Leraux, the Phantom, between [[ProfessionalKiller his]] [[{{Blackmail}} many]] [[StickyFingers talents]] also is a great [[{{Bizarrchitecture}} architect]], the world’s best {{ventriloqui|sm}}t and TortureTechnician.
--> "Did you design [[TortureCellar that room?]] [[RoboticTortureDevice It's very handsome]]. You're a great artist, Erik."
--> "Yes, [[IronicEcho a great artist]], [[TortureTechnician in my own line]]."
* Subverted in ''Literature/ThePictureOfDorianGray'', in which the painting definitely has a very dark side, but it's nothing to do with the artist Basil Hallward (who is actually a fairly sensible and decent fellow). It's actually the titular Dorian Gray, who was the one who commissioned the portrait, who goes a bit murderously mad because of it. [[spoiler: He ends up murdering Basil after he takes a look at the portrait, which has become hideous as it absorbs Dorian's evil and old age.]]

* Boday from Creator/JackChalker's series ''Riders Of The Wind'', who turns girls into living pieces of art for the rich clients. It's somewhat a stretch to call her evil (she travels with the main characters, and becomes more of a good character by the end of the series), but she's still quite insane ([[ThirdPersonPerson third-person speaking]] included).
* A film director in the Creator/BrianEvenson short story “Room Tone” makes a deal with a crooked realtor to shoot a horror movie in an empty house. Then the new owner arrives, and the director notices that he resembles the murder victim in the movie, starting a chain of bad news.
* From Creator/JRRTolkien's ''Literature/TheSilmarillion'': Fëanor probably falls somewhere between this and MadScientist, being an incredibly talented craftsman who becomes more or less insane after his greatest works are stolen (though he was already slightly unhinged due to a particularly unique case of MissingMom.)

%% * Some versions of Daeron might fit better.

* The ''Franchise/StarWarsExpandedUniverse'' Book ''Tales From The New Republic'' has Aldaric and Jaalib Brandl, a Father/ Son team of Dark Jedi who are also Theater Actors.

* [[MadDoctor Bonesaw]] from ''{{Literature/Worm}}'' considers her work to be art. Sane people describe it as BodyHorror.

-->"I want you to pose for me--so I can sneak up behind you, slit your throat and cover your corpse with papier mâché."

* David Wingrove's ''Literature/ChungKuo'' series of novels has Ben Sheppard, a schizophrenic genius who straddles the line between ForScience and [[MadArtist For Art]] . He throws himself into improving his new virtual reality artistic medium [[WhileRomeBurns while civilization is tearing itself apart]], sees a bandit raid as a chance to improve his artistic skills by observing their slaughter, and openly scoffs at the idealistic goals of his more outward-looking counterpart Kim Ward.

* ''VideoGame/BravelyDefaultII'' has Folie [[spoiler: [[ArtAttacker holder of the pictomancer asterisk]] ]] who in her quest to get high quality paint for her magnum opus has among other things: [[spoiler: participated in the invasion of Musa in order to get her hands on the earth crystal, used the earth crystals power to force the growth of several massive trees within the city of Wiswald, destroying public infrastructure and leaving many people homeless just to extract yellow paint from the bark of these trees. [[WouldHurtAChild Killed Mona]] and used the despair caused by her death in order to brainwash Mona's parents and loved ones so that she could use Mona's dad Roddy's resources in order to have him create high quality blue paint and lastly [[SerialKiller secretly kidnapped and killed a lot of people]] in order to harvest red paint from their blood. Oh and the painting she created using all this unethically sourced paint also happens to be an [[EldritchAbomination vaguely organic looking cave mural that fights alongside Folie during her boss fight.]]]]

*** From the popular LP of this game, ''LetsPlay/{{Boatmurdered}}'', Sankis becomes one of these after retiring as overseer of the fortress, making engravings about various things that had been happening around the fortress, including elephants killing dwarves, burning goblins, cheese, and ''homages to '''other images of cheese.'''''

* In the short ''Patchwork'' by [=IsArt Digital=], a sculptor finds he can no longer create beauty from stone, so he starts murdering various women for their best parts to create a flesh statue. In the end, all missing is a pretty head. His would-be victim, however, is a serial killer herself who likes to cut off men's heads, leave them in a creatively picked spot, and take a photo to make it last. So, she kills the sculptor and finishes the flesh statue with his head.

* The ''[[Franchise/TouhouProject Touhou]]''-like ''Nansei Project'' (which has plots, characters and themes for several games, but no actual games have been produced yet) has several: the art-loving troublemaker Wyra Sonohoka, the BigBad of the game Chusokarashi no Manaato (herself a work of art, whose madness is a result of Wyra interfering in her creation), and the DiscOneFinalBoss Hypolla Hiromi, who is not so much mad as she is manipulated by Manaato.

* "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS5E149TheJeopardyRoom 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.

** She later appears in ''ComicBook/AvengersAcademy'' helping Jeremy Briggs remove and redistribute all superpowers in the world because she thinks it will be a piece of "performance art" even greater than the ComicBook/CivilWar.

* The plot of Music/DavidBowie's ''1. Outside'' album is [[TrueArtIsIncomprehensible apparently]] about a mad artist kidnapping and murdering a colleague as a work of art.

* ''ComicBook/GreenLantern'': One of Kyle Rayner's enemies faced in Creator/JuddWinick's run is Alexander Nero, a highly disturbed nutjob whose drawn his share of disturbing imagery and goes on a rampage after the Weaponers of Qward give him a yellow power ring, enabling him to make constructs based on his warped imagination and use said constructs to endanger lives.

* The character James Franco plays in his recurring guest role on the soap opera ''Series/GeneralHospital'' fits this. The character, [[TheDanza nicknamed Franco,]] is an artist, sociopath and serial killer who artistically depicts crime scene reenactments and is obsessed with murder and death as an art form.

* The second season opener of the anthology series ''The Hunger'' ("Sanctuary") has Julian Priest (Music/DavidBowie), whose fascination with/resentment of death manifested itself in increasingly grisly and shocking performance art -- one piece had him surgically strip away a large piece of skin from his lower arm -- that led to outrage and shunning. Encountering a young man on the run for the murder of Julian's agent, he decides he'd make the perfect subject for his next work... the madness runs ''so'' deep that [[spoiler: the stranger is all in his head. Julian was the murderer and he's actually killing himself -- since turning his demise into a work of art will bring him the immortality he craves. The ghost of]] Julian goes on to host the rest of the series. (This is not Bowie's first encounter with this trope -- see Music below.)

* ''VideoGame/CultistSimulator'': One of the best ways to make money once you have a decent Passion score is to paint. As for the "mad" part...you're an eldritch cultist, that comes baked in. The Ghoul in particular focuses on art, with their ascension requiring them to consume corpses and use the [[EatBrainToGainMemories recovered memories]] as inspiration in their paintings. It's also someone subverted, in that painting can consume Restlessness and produce Contentment, making art a surprisingly good way of keeping yourself sane. And DoubleSubverted if your painting inspires Fascination, which causes you to go insane from the ''other'' direction.

* Shortly after the ''ComicBook/FantasticFour'' gained their powers, the Human Torch fought a guy named Wilhelm von Vile. ([[NotMakingThisUpDisclaimer Seriously, that was his name]].) Originally a [[IneffectualSympatheticVillain rather incompetent counterfeiter]], he found a set of magical paints that could [[RealityWarper bring anything he painted to life]]. The Torch defeated him and supposedly destroyed the paints, but he showed up ''much'' later ([[LongBusTrip about thirty years]]) in ''ComicBook/SpiderMan'', where he used his paints to awaken the latent mutant powers of two unsuccessful performance artists, then enhance them, and form a team called the Avant Guard, with the goal of plunging New York into an ice age as their insane version of a "masterpiece". They were defeated by the combined efforts of Spidey and the Torch.

** The final issue of ''ComicBook/BatmanAndRobin2009'' has Batman, Robin and Nightrunner confront the Man Who Laughs, a French counterpart to the Joker who had a Glasgow grin carved into his face when he was a child by his father when the latter was inspired by Creator/VictorHugo's ''Literature/TheManWhoLaughs'' and in adulthood kills and mutilates people as his own depraved method of creating art.

** The final issue of ''ComicBook/BatmanAndRobin2009'' has Batman, Robin and Nightrunner confront the Man Who Laughs, a French counterpart to the Joker who has a Glasgow grin carved into his face by his father when the latter was inspired by Creator/VictorHugo's ''Literature/TheManWhoLaughs'' and in adulthood kills and mutilates people as his own depraved method of creating art.

* ''ComicBook/GreenLantern'': One of Kyle Rayner's enemies faced in Creator/JuddWinick's run is Alexander Nero, a highly disturbed nutjob whose drawn his share of disturbing imagery and goes on a rampage after the Weaponers of Qward give him a yellow power ring, enabling him to make constructs based on his warped imagination.

* ''Film/TheBlackCat'': Hjalmar Poelzig is a Bauhaus-style architect, who is also a war criminal, HollywoodSatanist, serial killer, and strongly implied necrophile.

* In ''Film/Batman1989'', The Joker describes himself as "the world's first, fully functioning homicidal artist" and shows a perverse delight in Vicki Vale's graphic war photos, telling her that she gives it all such a glow. She is definitely not appreciative of the "living work of art" that he shows off to her (Alicia, Jack Napier's girlfriend, who has been physically and emotionally scarred such that she has to wear a mask as a result of what the Joker did to her).
** His minions join in, splattering paint on works of art in a museum gallery and otherwise being creatively destructive. TheDragon even takes this a step further, slashing open canvases with a sword -- until the Joker stops him, admitting that he "kind of likes" one of the paintings (Francis Bacon's infamously macabre ''Figure With Meat''). The premise is [[RefugeInAudacity so absurd]] that it's hard to tell if the Joker truly believes that he and his men are "improving" the artistic pieces or if he [[EvilIsPetty just wants to destroy everything in sight out of bitterness at his own disfigurement]].

* In an episode of ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons'' parodying TrueArtIsIncomprehensible, Homer is taken for a literal mad artist from the result of his frustrated rage when trying to build a barbecue. After that burns out, for his next work he ''floods the entirety of Springfield''. To rave reviews!

* ''WesternAnimation/SouthPark'' had [[AIIsACrapshoot funnybot]], who [[spoiler:was [[EarthShatteringKaboom about to kill everyone on the planet]] to reach the maximum amount of "awkward" and therefore create the ultimate joke. [[SubvertedTrope Ultimately subverted]] in that it was talked out of it offscreen in a BaitAndSwitch gag involving SealedEvilInACan and Creator/TylerPerry.]]
* The supervillain Brushogun in ''WesternAnimation/TeenTitansTroubleInTokyo'' was a lonely artist from feudal Japan who used dark magic to bring one of his drawings to life. The newly-alive painting then possessed his body and transformed him into a demon of paper and ink who could create living ink drawings to do his bidding.

** 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).

* Lisa Molinari, a.k.a. Coat of Arms, creates her own version of the ''ComicBook/YoungAvengers'' (who later change their name to the [[Characters/MarvelComicsYoungMasters Young Masters]]) as an art project examining the nature of superheroism. Lisa is a TrueNeutral person whose only interest in superheroism is [[DoingItForTheArt artistic]]. Besides herself, this team included two genuinely good people, a [[ComicBook/ThePunisher Punisher]] wannabe, a size-changing neo-Nazi, and a robot that said neo-Nazi reprograms to have views similar to her own. She is also a fan of [[Characters/MarvelComicsNormanOsborn Norman Osborn]].

* The ''Deathwish'' miniseries that spun off from ''ComicBook/Hardware1993'' had the villain being a murderer of transgender prostitutes named Boots, who used his victims to create "art". One crime scene in particular had his victims arranged to [[TheBurlesqueOfVenus copy]] ''Art/{{The Birth Of Venus|Botticelli}}''.

** In-game, dwarves can go into Strange Moods, where they get an idea for an artifact and pursue its creation at the expense of everything else. If they get everything they demand, they'll produce a masterwork item from their highest skill that ignores normal material requirements (i.e. beds usually must be made out of wood, but artifact beds can be metal) and is heavily decorated. If they fail for whatever reason, they go insane. If they succeed, they (usually) become Legendary in the used skill. There are three normal mood types- Fey (basic), Secretive (sketches pictures of demands), and Possessed (doesn't gain experience on success), and two that only unhappy dwarves can have, which really fit the trope best- Macabre (will want bones as a material) and Fell (will murder another dwarf and make the artifact out of their victim's corpse).

* The ''Deathwish'' miniseries that spun off from ''ComicBook/Hardware1993'' had the villain being a murderer of transgender prostitutes named Boots, who used his victims to create "art". One crime scene in particular had his victims arranged to [[TheBurlesqueOfVenus copy]] ''Art/{{The Birth Of Venus}Botticelli}}''.