What is art?

In a recent “you-absolutely-have-to-download-this-amazing-song” session, I sat down to sub-mainstream sensation Sufjan Stevens, hoping to hear something as delightful and moving as his hit, “Chicago.” What I got was his deeply lyrical and dark-toned, “John Wayne Gacy, Jr.” The subject of the song is the infamous serial killer, who, throughout the 1970s, killed 33 men and teenage boys and buried them underneath his house in a crawlspace. The ballad ends with the lyrics, “And in my best behavior, I am really just like him/Look beneath the floorboards, find the secrets I have hid.”\nAs is the case with most things that capture my attention, I went straight to Wikipedia to research the man who confounded almost every psychiatric expert with whom he came into contact. As part of his therapy while on death row, the killer was encouraged to take up painting. He caught the attention of Florida art dealer Steve Koschal, who, after Gacy’s 1994 execution, bought about 200 of his paintings, most of which were depictions of clowns, but others were of birds, fellow inmates and even the Seven Dwarves playing baseball against the Chicago Cubs. The latter was sold at auction in 1994 for $9,500.\nGacy was a prominent artist in a form of outsider art merely dubbed, “serial killer art.” It is often a means to provide art therapy for inmates or is used to establish a connection between a disturbed inmate’s psyche and his violent crimes. Sometimes, it is merely a form of entertainment to pass the time while in prison. Some prolific serial killer artists include Richard Ramirez, Henry Lee Lucas and “In Cold Blood” subject Perry Smith. The style and skill of serial killer art varies, and depending on the notoriety of the criminal or crime, pieces of art can sell for great amounts of money at auction.\nThis, of course, begs the question: How can a work of art be considered true art if it is done by such violent, even psychotic, criminals? In perhaps the strangest mode of artistic interpretation, serial killer art can be considered beautiful as a juxtaposition of the artist’s extremely dark actions. By painting subject matter considered innocent, such as clowns and birds, Gacy showed that he was a man who is closer to us in humanity than one might think, and going back to Sufjan Stevens, we are very much closer to his dark side than we might acknowledge.\nThat isn’t to say that the majority of us have bodies buried underneath our apartments, but through dark actions that shock our sensibilities, we often wonder how close we are to a similar character. In this way, serial killer art shines a light on the most terrible, darkest secrets our society contains; secrets that, like the violence of their producers, will heal through a recognition of the humanity we all tend to hide.