Muderabilia: Serial Killer Art

Muderabilia. Ever wonder what criminals do while imprisoned for long period of time? Well, one possible option is art. Perhaps it is used as a form of therapy-for the criminals to get their thoughts out on paper- in whichever artistic medium they choose. I stumbled upon this by chance, really. While listening to a song by Sufjan Stevens entitled "John Wayne Gacy, Jr." , the lyrics really disturbed me, so I googled, making my way to Wikipedia to read about the man. John Wayne Gacy ,also known as the 'Killer Clown', for the sheer fact that he would dress up as a clown at bock parties he held for the children on his block. " Gacy was convicted of luring 33 young men and boys to his Chicago area home for sex and strangling them between 1972 and 1978. Most were buried in a crawl space under the home; four others were dumped in rivers."(source) Creepy. He was imprisoned for 14 years before he was executed. Gacy took up oil painting while in jail. The image to the left is really quite strange. It looks like a regular skull at first glance, but after looking at it for a while, you begin to notice bodies(perhaps the people he killed?). There are female figures, phallis', and men. Male body parts are in the eyes of the skull, which could be read as Gacy's obsession with young boys' bodies. It's a creepy painting, for sure. In 2004, many of his painting were sold at an art show in Chicago. Though, there was muh protest about it, "Some people bought the art solely to destroy it; a bonfire in Naperville, Ill., in June 1994 was attended by 300 people, including family members of nine victims who watched 25 of Gacy's paintings and drawings burn."(source)  His story is fascinating in a really creepy way..here is the wiki article. Here is an aol article about muderabilia.

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