“I make art until someone dies”: In defence of on-screen art villains

Artists often get a bad rap: they’re self-indulgent, egotistical, and sometimes even insane. But are they capable of far worse… mass murder, perhaps? A fair share of filmmakers throughout the years seem to think so, and the ‘artist villain’ has become a recurring archetype in horror films ranging from grindhouse B-movies to Hollywood blockbusters. With enough evil artists to fill a whole wing at Arkham Asylum, please join me for a cinematic show trial of five creatives gone bad.

First up, Sid Phillips — the odious ten-year-old antagonist from Pixar’s Toy Story (1995). OK, Sid was neither an artist nor a murderer, but I think he’s a perfect example of an emerging art villain. We all remember his gang of mutant toys — that creepy metal spider baby, the fishing rod attached to dismembered Barbie legs. These hark back to a long tradition of fucked up dolls in art, from Hans Bellmer to Cindy Sherman. There’s even academic discourse surrounding Sid’s creations: in his book Dark Toys, David Hopkins refers to them as “a particularly apt post-modern signifier of the avant-garde”. As revealed in a later Toy Story sequel, Sid grew up to become a garbage collector, but I think he should have gone to study at UCLA under Paul McCarthy. Kunsthaus Bregenz would no doubt have given Sid a solo show, and Artangel could have helped stage one of his infamous firework displays, with hundreds of dolls attached to rockets. Alas, Sid’s enduring influence now lives on in the darkest corners of cottage-industry Etsy, where monster Furbies can fetch hundreds of pounds each.

The next piece of incriminating evidence is a triple bill of low-budget horror films from the ‘50s, ‘60s and ‘70s that showcase modern artists in a particularly unflattering light. Roger Corman’s A Bucket of Blood (1959) centres around a feeble-minded busboy called Walter Paisley. After accidentally killing his landlady’s cat, he smothers the dead kitty in plaster and exhibits it to great acclaim at the beatnik bar where he works. Walter is suddenly the artist du jour and starts wearing a beret accordingly. Encouraged to churn out more masterpieces, he starts murdering people and encasing them in plaster. “I am honoured to know this man,” proclaims a local poet, after witnessing the unveiling of Walter’s latest sculpture/victim. I might start quoting this line at private views.

In HG Lewis’ 1965 splatter flick Color Me Blood Red, painter Adam Sorg is struggling to mix up the perfect shade of vermilion, until he discovers that freshly drawn blood does the trick. And so begins yet another killing spree. One of the most gratuitous scenes involves him using the body of his dead girlfriend as a paintbrush, dragging her bloody corpse across the canvas. Hermann Nitsch eat your heart out!

Meanwhile, after a hard day’s painting (and with no peace, courtesy of the No Wave band rehearsing next door) artist Reno Miller takes to the streets of Manhattan, where he brutally murders homeless people with a power drill. Even though it was made over 40 years ago, Abel Ferrara’s notorious ‘video nasty’ The Driller Killer (rest assured, the censors were not a fan of this movie) feels the most contemporary of all, even though it depicts the ‘70s Downtown art scene. Serious gore buffs have complained that overall, the film is quite boring (screen time devoted to killing by drilling probably only amounts to ten minutes), but for me, it’s a fantastic portrait of the artist as a crazy young man. We witness Miller caressing his new painting (“I love you”), sloppily eating a McDonald’s, arguing with his gallerist, and being mean to his girlfriend: “You know about how to bitch, and how to eat, and how to shit, and how to bitch, but you don’t know nothing about painting!”

These artists seem to have cracked under the pressure to stay ahead. It’s a wonder this doesn’t happen more often in real life — or maybe it does, and there’s a murderous global art star out there yet to be apprehended.

Finally, my Academy Award / Life Sentence for ‘Best Art Baddie’ goes to Jack Nicholson for his portrayal of the Joker in Batman (1989). “I make art until someone dies,” the Joker boasts to photojournalist Vicki Vale, “I am the world’s first fully-functioning homicidal artist.” He and his goons have just vandalised the masterpieces in Gotham’s Flugelheim Museum: a Rembrandt self-portrait gets covered in handprints and then paint-balled; a Degas ballerina sculpture whacked off its plinth. The only piece spared is Francis Bacon’s Figure with Meat. Very much a trendsetter, the Joker did this three decades before Just Stop Oil activists cracked open a tin of soup. He offers an honest peer appraisal of Vale’s work, leafing through her portfolio: “crap, crap, crap, crap, crap, crap…” — another line to use at private views.

For his artistic finale, the Joker, riding a parade float, showers the citizens of Gotham with dollar bills, whilst simultaneously trying to poison them using gas from his giant balloons — luckily, Batman saves the day. An edgelord art critic might argue that, in the Joker’s defence, his actions were merely a critique of late 20th-century capitalism. Fiction can offer imaginary artists a space to try out stuff (or snuff) that they would never be permitted — legally, ethically, morally — to carry out in the real world (and yes, obviously, for good reason). On a side note, contemporary artists Philippe Parreno and Alex Da Corte have both recreated the Joker’s giant baby balloon in their own work. Da Corte’s piece, aptly named Free Money, was exhibited outside the 2016 Frieze Art Fair in New York, but in this case, the balloon wasn’t full of toxic Smylex gas…at least I hope not.