10 Pieces of Art That Made People Go Out Of Their Minds

Art, and by proxy, artists, have a reputation for being a little… off. Their antics range from fun and silly to terrifying, but they remain an essential part of society. It’s not always the artists themselves who are the crazy ones, though. Art, music, writing, all of it inspires people in any number of ways. Sometimes it inspires us to create or to change our behavior, sometimes it informs us and makes us think. And sometimes it makes us go straight up insane.

Steve Reich - Four Organs

Steve Reich earned a reputation in the 1960s for blowing minds left and right with his rhythmic tape loop manipulations and cyclical compositions. The results were looping sounds, crisscrossing each other and often disorienting the listener. What were you expecting? It was the 60s. In spite of the trippy nature of his compositions, he was gaining traction as a noted composer. The problem was that usually, those audiences had certain expectations when it came to music.

In 1970, Reich wrote a piece of music called 4 Organs where different organs played a broken up chord at differing tempos, eventually coming together to form the chord in a final, crescendoing drone. It went well when it premiered at the Guggenheim in New York, but when it was played for a more conservative crowd at Carnegie Hall a few years later, all hell broke loose. The audience booed loudly, and one woman reportedly walked to the stage and hit her head on it repeatedly, screaming “Stop! I confess!” Joke's on them, as since then Reich has secured a place among the most legendary composers of all time.

Igor Stravinsky - Rite of Spring

You’ve heard the Rite of Spring. It’s everywhere, serenity clashing with madness. It was used in Disney’s Fantasia, otherwise known as the best movie ever made by anyone. Period. You’d think the music from a movie for children would be as uncontroversial as they come, but a couple of decades before it accompanied wizard Micky The Rite Of Spring made waves with European ballet fans.

Igor Stravinsky was already fairly well known as a composer in 1913 and had a reputation for being innovative and inventive. His new work was premiering at the newly completed Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, and the theater was sparing nothing in the promotion of its upcoming season. On the night of the performance, the theater had a packed house, full of old guard ballet buffs. Stravinsky knew he’d composed something they’d never heard before, full of a-tonal clashes he hoped would get them on their feet. However, when the piece was performed, the crowd not only got on its feet, a full-on riot consumed the audience. The seasoned fans took this new style as an affront to classical music and a personal insult. It’s telling that within thirty years the piece that inspired such passionate vitriol accompanied a cartoon mouse.

J.D. Salinger - Catcher in The Rye

J.D. Salinger’s iconic tale of teen angst has been required reading for nonconformists and outsiders since it’s publication in 1951. Holden Caufield, the teenaged protagonist, is bubbling with contempt for authority and “phonies.” The book has been banned and demonized countless times, only adding to its legendary status. It’s inspired some in ways that are less than productive, though, and has been involved in some events that have given it an infamous reputation.

It’s hard to imagine (pardon the inadvertent pun) anyone wanting to harm former Beatle John Lennon. One of the worlds most vocal advocates for peace, Lennon was beloved around the world. One of his admirers was Mark David Chapman, a troubled man who aligned himself with Holden Caufield, to the extent that he signed letters The Catcher In The Rye. Chapman had a troubled childhood, and early in his life worked as a counselor at a children’s camp, taking pride in working with kids. Like the angst-ridden protagonist, Chapman considered it his duty to rescue children from the pressures of adulthood. After a string of mishaps and a struggle with depression and alcoholism, however, Chapman began to obsess over some specific things in his life, including the book and John Lennon. When Chapman was caught after shooting the legendary singer four times in the back, a copy of the book was found among his things. Chapman claimed that Lennon was a “phony” and had grown increasingly angry with him over the weeks prior.

Leni Riefenstahl - Triumph of the Will and Olympia

Hitler was pretty bad. Like, bad enough to earn the scorn of every rational human being since. His rise to power wasn’t exactly unprecedented, but his methods and the hysteria behind him were no accident. He used angry rhetoric and fear to elevate himself to lead Germany in a nationalistic and anti-Semitic quest for world domination. Hitler had help too, he was surrounded by advisors who helped his reign of terror stay successful.

One of those assistants was young actress and filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl. Riefenstahl had started a successful career in the new German film industry, directing and acting in a variety of acclaimed films. Her relationship with the brutal leader is still unclear, and she claims to have known nothing of the Holocaust at the time. That didn’t stop her from producing two of the most important and iconic documentaries of all time. Triumph of the Will and Olympia document the power and the “glory” of Adolph Hitler and helped him secure the trust of the people. It’s arguable that without Riefenstahl and his minister of propaganda, Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi’s wouldn’t have had as strong of a backing from the people as he did, and perhaps the world would be a much different place.

The Beatles - Helter Skelter

There’s an iconic film of the Beatles arriving in the U.S. to throngs of hysterical fans, screaming uncontrollably. The Fab Four undoubtedly had the power and charisma to make their fans go crazy, but some took this to dangerous extremes. When the group released their experimental and groundbreaking White Album in 1968, some were turned off by the extreme soundscapes and unconventional pop songs, while others were transported to another aural dimension. And then there was a young hippie by the name of Charles Manson.

Upon listening to the now legendary album, Manson worked out secret messages contained in its avant-garde soundscapes, especially in the song Helter Skelter. Basically, he claimed that there was a race war on the horizon, and thought white people would fight amongst themselves until they were dead. After that, he’d creep out from his underground bunker and take control of the world from, I guess, every other race. All of this because, according to Manson, they wouldn’t know what to do once in power. Yes, this is very insane, and yes, Manson went on to murder people with his cult. Would he have done it without that demonic White Album? We’ll never know. Probably, though, he’s very insane.

The Lettrists - The Notre Dame Affair

The first half of the 20th Century was an exciting and bizarre time for the art world. In the 1940s, influenced by the Dada and surrealist movements of the 1920s and 30s, Isidore Isou started the Lettrist movement in France. The Lettrists were a group of leftist avant-garde artists with a penchant for absurd acts, disappointed by the stagnation of avant-garde movements by the 1940s. The group resided on the fringes of extreme art and took an antagonistic stance against what they perceived to be the art establishment.

A big part of that establishment, as it is in most counter-cultural movements, was religion. It was with this in mind that four members of a radical extension of the movement entered a church on Easter Sunday in 1950. Michel Mourre, Ghislain Desnoyers de Marbaix, Jean Rullier, and Serge Berna attended a huge mass, aired live on national television. Mourre dressed as a monk and shanghaied the sermon. He read an anti-sermon, penned by the group, declaring God dead. The aftermath of this public performance art was a mob scene of angry parishioners. As the quartet of agitators escaped the chaotic scene and fled to the streets they were ironically rescued when they were arrested, a result The Lettrists may actually have appreciated.

John Millington Synge - The Playboy of the Western World

Ireland in the early 20th Century was a tumultuous place, with puritanical Irish nationalists in constant conflict with the natural cultural evolution taking place. John Millington Synge penned his most famous play in this climate but persisted to put on one of the most controversial theatrical performances of the time.

The Playboy of the Western World tells the story of a man who supposedly kills his father. He brags to the town, who take him at his word and hold him up as a hero. He seduces women and impresses the town, but when his father turns up alive, he’s caught. I won’t spoil it, though it’s not terribly popular today. At the time, however, all this patricide and mentions of women’s undergarments were scandalous, simply scandalous. A group of Irish nationalists in the audience thought this flippant attitude towards familial murder and sex was a bad fit for Ireland and, well, set to rioting. The irony was palpable. It turned out, though, that it wasn’t just bad for Ireland. When the play premiered in New York a few years later there were similar riots. Theater just isn’t as fun these days, ya know?

Salmon Rushdie - The Satanic Verses

Salman Rushdie was making a comfortable living as a mildly controversial and critically well-received author in 1988. That is until he published his fourth novel, The Satanic Verses, in that year. The novel is a work of magical realism about Indian immigrants to the United Kingdom working in the entertainment industry. They undergo a series of unbelievable life-transforming events, and eventually a murder-suicide.

That’s obviously a very brief synopsis, but apparently, the novel didn’t sit well with Ayatollah Khomeini of Iran. He immediately issued a fatwa against Rushdie, ordering Muslims to kill him on sight. The book was subsequently banned in a number of countries and threats on bookstores were widespread. Rushdie himself was under strict police protection for the next nine years. Khomeini’s successor eventually retracted the fatwa, but it was renewed last year when Iranian media outlets pooled $600,000 for a reward.

The Blackest of Black Metal

Heavy metal, since its inception, has inspired insane behavior. From fire breathers to bat decapitation, the anthems of the beast have an unholy power over its devoted followers. There was an incident in 1991, however, that shook the metal scene to its core, for better or worse. Mayhem was a popular black metal band from Oslo in the 1980s. Towards the end of the decade, they were joined by vocalist “Dead.”

True to his name, Dead committed suicide in a house owned by the band in April of 1991. The singer had slit his wrists before shooting himself, leaving a grisly scene. When bass player Euronymous arrived, instead of calling the police, he went to a store and purchased a camera to document the scene. He also rearranged some things in the room, and this is where it gets weird. Oh, you thought that was the weird part? You were wrong. It also gets pretty gross and disturbing, so be warned. Euronymous allegedly gathered pieces of brain and ate them. He also scraped up some pieces of the deceased’s skull and made them into jewelry, distributing them to metal musicians who he deemed worthy. This one might be the most insane thing to be inspired by music ever.

Taxi Driver

Martin Scorsese's landmark film Taxi Driver is best remembered for its violent and mad protagonist Travis Bickle, hell-bent on vigilante justice for the people, and specifically one person: a 12-year-old Jodi Foster playing the part of a child prostitute. Travis Bickle wasn’t the only one with a confused reality and a warped sense of justice. John Hinkley Jr. was an intelligent and popular student in high school, but life after wasn’t so kind. He failed as a songwriter after dropping out of college and became depressed. He also developed an unhealthy fascination with weapons.

A couple of years later, he became obsessed with Jodi Foster after seeing her in Taxi Driver. He took his obsession to an extreme, and followed her to Yale, enrolling in classes to be near the young actress. When it didn’t work out, Hinkley developed a plan to mimic Travis Bickle in the film and followed then-president Jimmy Carter. After that didn’t work out, he penned one final letter to Foster, alerting her to his new plan. The letter wasn’t received in time to stop him, and he was able to shoot president Ronald Reagan. Fortunately, Reagan recovered and Hinkley was put away for life, though he was found not guilty due to insanity.