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Banksy -

When it comes to criminal art, graffiti is the first medium that comes to mind. In most cities, graffiti is an illegal act of vandalism that is punishable by law. Some cities have created designated areas where the art form is allowed, but the outlaw spirit of the act isn’t entirely satisfied with this solution.

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Banksy -

Banksy is the most famous graffiti artist in the world by a long shot. His identity has remained unknown for decades even as the profile of his work continues to grow. He started out in Bristol and is most prolific in the streets of the UK, but he has also painted pieces on public buildings, walls, and bridges all over the world.

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Banksy -

Banksy’s art now sells for millions at auction, but he’s still a wanted man. In 2013, he announced a sort of month-long “artist residency” in New York and began to create as many public pieces around the city as he could. He was deemed a “vandal” by then-mayor Mike Bloomberg. Anyone caught in the act of defacing public property could be arrested, but, as usual, Banksy went undetected.

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Shepard Fairey -

Shepard Fairey has a similar reputation to Banksy. He is one of the most highly respected graffiti artists in the US and designed the famous ‘Hope’ posters for Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign. Unfortunately, having friends in high places doesn’t always get him off the hook.

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Shepard Fairey -

In 2009, Fairey was arrested on the way to a premiere of his exhibition in Boston. According to police, he was wanted on two outstanding warrants related to public graffiti almost 10 years earlier. Fairey was put on trial, plead guilty, and was sentenced to two years probation.

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M.F. Husain (1915-2011) -

Husain had already chosen self-imposed exile from India after decades of intimidation, death threats, and violent attacks from right-wing conservatives. He didn’t return to India to appear in court, and died as a controversial but celebrated artist in the UK in 2011.

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M.F. Husain (1915-2011) -

M.F. Husain was a renowned Indian artist who habitually scandalized and offended the Hindu conservatives of his country with untraditional paintings of Hindu deities. In 2006, when he was already 90 years old, a warrant for his arrest was issued in response to a piece called ‘Mother India.’ The painting showed a naked woman whose body was posed to take on the shape of India (not pictured).

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Caravaggio (1571-1610) -

Caravaggio’s work has a brutal quality to it that captures acts of violence and true human suffering with startling immediacy. As it turns out, his skills may have been informed by personal experience. The Italian Renaissance painter was known to have had a bad temper and carry a sword. He was frequently in trouble for getting into fights, slapping waiters, and slandering his rivals in the art world.

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Caravaggio (1571-1610) -

He spent most of his working life in Rome, but had to flee the city in 1606 after killing a man during a fight in a piazza. He was on the run from the authorities for the rest of his life while moving between other places like Malta and Sicily. Some historians interpret guilt and self-loathing in the paintings he created during this period, such as this self-portrait he included in a painting of David holding the severed head of Goliath.

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Benvenuto Cellini (1500-1571) -

Compared to Benvenuto Cellini, Caravaggio was a saint! Cellini was an Italian goldsmith and sculptor active during the Renaissance. He is believed to have killed many men without ever being punished. He stabbed his brother’s murderer to death with a dagger, killed a rival goldsmith, and shot an innkeeper to death.

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Benvenuto Cellini (1500-1571) -

How do we know all this about Cellini when he was never caught? He wrote it all down in his autobiography! His writing suggests that he felt little remorse for his crimes. He managed to get away with them because of his clout as a renowned artist.

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Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) -

Pablo Picasso was notoriously abusive to the many young muses he had relationships with. His first muse, Fernande Olivier, wrote that he would often lock her in the house when he went out during their seven-year relationship, and wouldn’t let her create her own paintings despite the fact that she was also an artist. He believed that women should not “trespass on men’s preserve.”

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Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) -

His behavior would be indefensible today, but it was a totally different matter that landed him in jail. The 'Mona Lisa' was stolen from the Louvre in Paris in 1911, and Picasso quickly became a suspect. This was due to his association with the French con man Honoré Joseph Géry Pieret, who was known to have stolen several pieces from the Louvre to sell. In fact, Picasso had bought some of his stolen goods!

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Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) -

Picasso was questioned and the other stolen artworks he'd purchased from Géry Pieret were found in his possession, but they couldn't connect him to the theft of the 'Mona Lisa,' so he was eventually set free. The thief turned out to be an Italian man with no connection to Picasso.

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Otto Dix (1891-1969) -

Otto Dix was a German painter active during Hitler’s rise to power. As a modernist, he was labeled a “degenerate” artist by the Nazi regime. In 1923, Dix had his first run-in with the law when he was brought before a judge for obscenity charges in response to a painting of a topless woman.

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Otto Dix (1891-1969) -

Dix had served in the military during World War I, and his work was very critical of war and German society. His 1920 painting ‘War Cripples’ was displayed in a Degenerate Art exhibition by the Nazis with a label calling it “an insult to the German heroes of the Great War.” In 1939, he was arrested under suspicion of involvement in a plot to assassinate Hitler, but was released due to lack of evidence.

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Chris Burden (1946-2015) -

The performance artist Chris Burden was notorious for his daring and controversial stunts. He often put himself in harm’s way and on the wrong side of the law for his art. One of his most famous performances was his 1971 ‘Shoot,’ in which he had a friend shoot him in the arm in a gallery in front of an audience.

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Chris Burden (1946-2015) -

In 1972, Burden planned an elaborate performance called ‘Deadman.’ He went to LA’s busy La Cienega Boulevard and lay on the ground beside a parked car, covering himself with a tarp so that he looked like the deceased victim of a road accident. He placed flares around his body so that passing cars would be aware of him, but they would burn out after 15 minutes, leaving him in a dangerous position.

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Chris Burden (1946-2015) -

The police arrived just before the flares went out so Burden was lucky not to be involved in a real accident, although he was arrested for creating a false emergency. He was put on trial, but the case was dismissed after three days.

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Egon Schiele (1890-1918) -

The Austrian Expressionist Egon Schiele is well-known for his explicit paintings of women that express a raw sexuality that is still somewhat shocking today. Schiele was in the habit of using young girls as models, and in 1912 he was arrested for engaging in a sexual relationship with a 13-year-old.

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Egon Schiele (1890-1918) -

In the end, he wasn’t charged for the original crime, but for the hundreds of graphic drawings the police found in his studio. He was sentenced to a month in prison for public immorality, and stopped using child models after that.

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Olive Wharry (1886-1947) -

Olive Wharry was a British artist from the 20th century who is perhaps better remembered as an active member of the women’s suffrage movement. Wharry was involved in a window-smashing campaign organized by the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU), which landed her in jail for six months in 1911. She was ultimately released early after going on hunger strike.

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Olive Wharry (1886-1947) -

In 1913, some of the more extreme members of the movement escalated their protests. Wharry and another suffragette named Lilian Lenton set fire to a tea house in London’s Kew Gardens. They claimed that they targeted the tea house because they believed it was owned by the Crown (which turned out to be untrue) and that they had checked that no one was inside first. Wharry was once again sent to jail, and was once again released when she went on hunger strike.

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Olive Wharry (1886-1947) -

Wharry was imprisoned eight times in the space of a few years and never served her full sentence due to the success of her hunger strikes! The WSPU awarded her a Hunger Strike Medal for her valor. Her soft watercolor paintings strike a surprising contrast to her extreme actions in the suffragette movement.

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Richard Dadd (1817-1886) -

Richard Dadd was an English painter from the Victorian era. While traveling Europe and the Middle East in 1842, Dadd started to exhibit worrying changes in behavior, becoming increasingly delusional and violent. When he returned home in 1843, he was diagnosed as being of unsound mind and was sent to recuperate with his family.

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Richard Dadd (1817-1886) -

Sadly, Dadd started to believe that his father was the devil in disguise and murdered him. He was arrested and sent to the infamous Broadmoor, England’s oldest high-security psychiatric hospital. Dadd was treated by progressive doctors and allowed to continue creating art during his institutionalization. He is most famous for the fantastical paintings he made after his arrest, mostly depicting fairies and supernatural subjects.

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Spencer Tunick -

Spencer Tunick is an American photographer who is best known for his photos of enormous groups of naked people! He has organized more than 70 such photoshoots since the 1990s, although they've gotten him into some trouble more than once.

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Spencer Tunick -

Tunick has been arrested in New York at least five times for assembling crowds of unclothed people in public spaces for his photoshoots. In 2000, he successfully petitioned the Second US District Court for legal protection for himself and his participants in the name of art. Pictured is Tunick's gathering for a 2007 photoshoot in Mexico City's central Zócalo square, which involved around 18,000 people.

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Steven Cohen -

Steven Cohen is a South African visual and performance artist. His work is both provocative and controversial, often involving aspects of his identity as a gay, Jewish, South African man. He has stated that he employs the "very South African approach to using public space with political consciousness.”

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Steven Cohen -

One of his more controversial public performances landed him in front of a French judge in 2014. Cohen stepped out in front of the Eiffel Tower wearing feathers on his head and arms, a corset, red platform heels, and nothing else. He had a live rooster attached to his private parts with a string. The piece was called 'Coq' (not pictured) and was intended as a commentary on the phallic nature of power. His performance was halted by police after 10 minutes and Cohen was taken in for nine hours of questioning. His case went to trial and he was found guilty of sexual exhibitionism, although there was no punishment.

See also: The strange methods of history's most eccentric artists

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